


What the Water Gave Me

by hobbitdragon, SD_Ryan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Bickering, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Communication, Digital Art, Does it count as polyamory if they're both in the same body?, Eldritch, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Lovecraft AU, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Magic, Polyamory, Portals, Romance, Sharing a Body, Shower Sex, Snark, Softer versions of Lovecraftian horror, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Trauma, art embedded in fic, kind of?????, possibly? not sure if that's the right tag for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-03 06:55:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14563470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/pseuds/hobbitdragon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SD_Ryan/pseuds/SD_Ryan
Summary: One moment Steve stood listening to Fury talk some nonsense to deceive the bugs apparently everywhere in Steve’s apartment, and the next moment a door opened where there hadn’t been a door before. In the doorway stood a figure, outlined in the fluorescent light pouring out from behind it. Steve made out arms, legs, a head, but around those were....other limbs, squirming and curling. His head ached when he tried to count them, perhaps three, perhaps twenty. His eyes shied away from understanding the sight of them, at once glowing with an oil-slick rainbow of colors while also being the same empty blackness of endless space.The figure looked hard at Steve, meeting his eyes over a face-mask. The eyes were the same as those awful limbs, simultaneously a bright, mesmerizing gold and also holes into a place with no light at all.





	1. Up From the Depths

**Author's Note:**

> My fic for the Marvel Reverse Big Bang over on tumblr! My artist was the wonderful SD_Ryan, who inspired me to write this fic by drawing Bucky with tentacles. I cannot resist tentacles! XD The artwork is in the middle of chapter 4.
> 
> Thank you to SD_Ryan for providing encouragement throughout the writing process, and to my kind and affirming beta, daphneblithe!!
> 
> I don't normally write horror, so this was a fun adventure for me! I actually spooped myself with a few of the scenes. For my readers who are worried about reading something with the "horror" tag on it, in my opinion as someone who generally hates horror, this fic starts scary and then evens out. 
> 
> The "canon-typical violence" tag refers to gruesome violence that is mostly alluded to rather than being described in great detail. 
> 
> Fic title and quotes at the beginning and end of the fic are from [the song of the same name by Florence + The Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Wa4IOfdG4). It makes a good accompaniment for this fic, if you're interested in a soundtrack.

_Time it took us to where the water was_

_That's what the water gave me_

 

_And time goes quicker between the two of us_

_Oh, my love, don't forsake me_

_Take what the water gave me_

 

_'Cause they took your loved ones  
_

_But returned them in exchange for you_

_Would you have it any other way?_

_But oh, my love, don't forget me_

_When I let the water take me_

 

 

_Lay me down_

_Let the only sound be the overflow_

**

One moment Steve stood listening to Fury talk some nonsense to deceive the bugs apparently everywhere in Steve’s apartment, and the next moment a door opened where there hadn’t been a door before. Both Steve and Fury turned toward it, an entryway on a wall Steve knew for a fact had been solid. Even if the wall had somehow been knocked down, it would have only led to his bedroom rather than the long, institutional hallway now revealed.

In the doorway stood a figure, outlined in the fluorescent light pouring out from behind it. Steve made out arms, legs, a head, but around those were....other limbs, squirming and curling. His head ached when he tried to count them, perhaps three, perhaps twenty. His eyes shied away from understanding the sight of them, at once glowing with an oil-slick rainbow of colors while also being the same empty blackness of endless space.

The figure looked hard at Steve, meeting his eyes over a face-mask. The eyes were the same as those awful limbs, simultaneously a bright, mesmerizing gold and also holes into a place with no light at all.

Then the monster shot Fury three times in the chest with a handgun. The shots slammed into Steve’s ears, shocking him into movement, but before Steve could do more than step forward the figure closed the door behind it. When Steve’s hands connected with the wall, there was nothing left but plaster, dented where Steve had leapt to catch a doorknob that didn’t exist.

**

Seeing Fury laid out on the operating table did something strange to Steve’s head and heart. Waking up in a new century with everyone he knew dead or forgetting him had given him a forced and rapid introduction to coping with loss, especially so soon after Bucky’s death. But Steve found that there was a new and very particular feeling to watching a commanding officer he’d recently argued with laid out this way.

Natasha rushed into the observation lounge, her hands slapping against the door and the wall in her anxiety to see the OR.

“Is he gonna make it?”

Steve said nothing. He didn’t know, and he knew better than to offer empty reassurance to a woman like Natasha.

“Tell me about the shooter,” she demanded a second later, eyes fixed on the sutures in Fury’s bare chest.

Sighing, Steve tried to figure out how to phrase this. He hadn’t known what to say to Hill or ‘Agent 13’ either. Did he dance around the truth or just meet it head-on? Both Agent 13 and Hill had looked at him as if he were crazy, and he didn’t need that from Natasha too. But then Steve sighed, because Fury might die so now didn’t seem like the time for self-protective lies.

“He came in through the wall,” Rogers said after a brief pause. “And I don’t mean he busted a hole through it. He walked in through a door that wasn’t there a second before and which wasn’t there again right after. My height, Caucasian, with shoulder-length brown hair….” he paused, aware yet again of how ridiculous this sounded. “One metal arm, along with a bunch of other limbs I can’t really describe.” Whether she believed him or not, at least Steve’s photographic memory allowed him to give reports whose accuracy he stood behind. Though even his normally eidetic mind rebelled against the image of those limbs. And those eyes.

Out of the corner of his gaze, Steve saw Natasha’s chest move as though flinching.

“He just appeared and disappeared?”

Then Nick Fury died, and the conversation with it.

**

Later--after the STRIKE team turned on him, and he jumped out of a high-rise building, and had been shot at by SHIELD men--Steve cornered Natasha in the hospital hall. The electrical burns on his belly and back throbbed, the bruises throbbed, and anger coursed through him like venom. He dug his thumbs into the tender skin of her arms, and watched her _let_ him see her flinch.

There was nobody trustworthy, nobody good anymore. He didn’t want to have to kill her--if he even could after STRIKE. His reflexes were slow with exhaustion and pain and she was very skillful.

“I’m not gonna ask you again,” he growled at her, and hated being a man menacing a woman, hated how much bigger than her he was, hated that she could and might gut him with a hidden knife at any second. Hated watching her lips part as she played shocked and innocent.

Then the moment passed, and her eyes settled on his.

“I know who killed Fury,” she admitted, and her breath smelled like bubblegum. Whatever he’d expected her to say, it hadn’t been that.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe this assassin exists. The ones who do call him the Water Soldier. He’s credited with more than fifty kills in as many years.”

 _That’s a ghost story,_ Steve wanted to say, but he knew what he’d seen. What had been in his own apartment, however briefly. So he swallowed the words, and she continued instead.

“Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. We were in a car, and then there was a man standing in the road where no one had been before. I swerved around him and kept driving, but he just....walked up alongside us, as if we were standing still.” Her nostrils flared. “He reached into the car with something that definitely wasn’t a human arm and just pulled the scientist out like you might pick up an object on a shelf. I circled back to them, but by the time I stopped the car the target was already dead and the assassin was gone. Just gone, like he’d never been there.”

Steve swallowed, letting go of her arms and pulling back. “Sounds familiar, yeah.”

“Going after him’s a dead end, I’ve tried,” Natasha admitted, sounding both angry and impressed. She tightened her lips. “He’s like a ghost story,” she added, as though she’d read his mind. “Something you’d tell to frightened children.”

Then she held up the flash drive, letting Steve take it. Her fingertips were warm.

“So let’s find out what the ghost wants.”

**

Chasing the ghost turned up a program even Natasha couldn’t decipher and an origin point containing regiments of his own ghosts. In the chilled night air of Camp Lehigh, Steve half-thought he could feel the men moving around him, cold fingertips just brushing him and faces that vanished when he turned to look.

The abandoned secret SHIELD base still somehow came as a surprise. In it, dust lay thick on everything in the empty rooms. The only sign of life was a single computer in one corner, its screen dim in the yellowy lights. It was one of those older models, with the big boxy monitors and code showing in green text on a black background.

A message lay written there, followed by a blinking underscore.

“‘Close your eyes and imagine the way down,’” Natasha read. “Well that’s helpful.” She peered around the back of the computer, and looked under the desk. “This thing is so old it doesn’t even have the capacity for internet, so this can’t be where the files originated.”

Steve’s teeth ached as he clenched his jaw, remembering the door in his living room that led to an unknown place and vanished when closed. Steve and Natasha examined the base, moving methodically through the rooms, but other than their own footprints, the dust of decades lay undisturbed.

Except for one place in the very back, where a single pair of footprints--from large bare feet--stood in front of a wall of shelves. Natasha said nothing about it, but Steve imagined that she felt as uneasy about those solitary footprints as he did. Air whistled from between the shelves, and when Steve pulled, the shelves slid aside.

Beyond them lay an empty ten-by-ten concrete space. And yet there was a wind, as though from the movement of air through to somewhere larger.

“Why hide _nothing_ like this?” Natasha wondered aloud. “Unless they stored something here that’s been moved since.”

An awful thought crawled into Steve’s mind. “Close your eyes,” he commanded, and then rolled his at the look Natasha gave him. “I know it sounds stupid. But I told you, an assassin got into my apartment from a door that _wasn’t there_ a second before, and _wasn’t there again_ a second after. Maybe we shouldn’t assume normal rules apply.”

Natasha let out a grunt of displeasure, but she turned her back. “Fine, my eyes are closed. Happy now?”

 _No,_ Steve thought. _Nothing about this makes me happy._ But he closed his eyes too, and on the far wall he imagined an elevator and a button to push to summon it. The concrete chilled his palm as he felt his way along the room before his thumb bumped into the far wall. Fumbling along with his other hand, he slapped it onto a metal panel by accident, his palm pushing a single round button there.

When he opened his eyes again, the sight of an elevator where there hadn’t been one before made him flinch, a visceral recoiling from the button under his palm as though it were slimy or dirty. Half a second later, a light came on over the doors, machinery chimed to signal the arrival of the car, and then the doors slid apart.

Natasha spun at the sound, staring at the open carriage. Then she looked at him.

“This seems like a really bad idea, I’d just like to say,” Natasha stated.

Steve grimaced, privately agreeing. “What other choice do we have? There’s a secret SHIELD headquarters in a decades-abandoned military base, and the program on Fury’s drive came from here.”

So they stepped into the elevator and let it seal up around them like a mouth.

As the metal box sank down, down, down, the hairs rose on Steve’s forearms and nape, cold sweat prickling on his forehead and throat. Natasha shifted from foot to foot beside him, letting out an audibly shaky breath, and then drew closer to him. Steve couldn’t escape the notion that the elevator was bringing them to Hell, or to another underworld so deep and dark that it had no name.

When the elevator doors at last opened, the light from the dim bulb touched nothing beyond the threshold. A yawning open space lay beyond, perfect in its darkness, and yet clearly a single room. Rather than being visible through light, the shape of the walls, ceiling, and floor formed themselves by a tracery of red sigils, which throbbed and pulsed in time with an unheard heartbeat.

Steve’s skin tried to crawl right off him to escape into the furthest corner of the elevator. Every time he tried to look at the sigils to determine if they were writing or images, his eyes wanted to close, his neck already aching with the urge to turn away so that he would not see that awful place. Natasha stood to his left, but there was the feeling of someone else standing near enough to Steve’s face to breathe upon him. When Steve finally forced himself to inhale, he expected to smell someone’s sour teeth, but there was only a whiff of something familiar and chemical.

Natasha murmured something in Russian, and clutched at Steve’s sleeve as he stepped forward.

“Steve--” she began, but then his shoe landed on a sigil. The room throbbed, a rapid arrhythmia that forced Steve’s eyes toward something in the middle of the room: a single darker patch, an absence of the language his eyes refused to see. He fixed upon it automatically, his feet leading him toward it. Natasha let go of his sleeve, the warmth of her touch fading behind him as he crossed to the thing on the floor.

His eyes saw nothing, but the knowledge fell chilly into his mind anyway: a body lay on the floor, prone, with its arms crossed over its chest. A dead thing, the seawater of its blood and tears long since fled to leave behind a dessicated husk. A dead thing in whose beating heart he stood.

“Steve!” Natasha called out from behind him. “Steve--” But no words followed after.

Steve knew this dead thing, he realized. Knew its name and the face it had worn before the waters left it.

“Zola,” he breathed. “What did you do?”

The answer came in images, dropped into his mind like shards of ice: an ancient being called from outside the universe, summoned by death and pain and fear and bound to human flesh; Zola binding its will to himself as its summoner, keeping it controlled as long as he remained alive; and then a second ritual, performed without Zola’s consent, to tie his soul to the world even after his body died, so that the monster he’d brought to Earth could be kept tame.

The heartbeat in the walls sped, desperate.

 _Kill me,_ the corpse begged. _I called the ocean and it came. Call down fire, drop bombs to destroy me, let no water touch me ever again--_

Steve collapsed. The room was drowning him, the taste of blood in his mouth suffocating him. He sank into it.

Then small hands closed on his arms, and Natasha dragged him backward away from the dead thing.

“Fire,” he whispered. “Imagine fire.”

She must have, because the room burned, and they fell from it up, up into the office above, landing hard onto the concrete floors. Dust fountained up to meet them, and Steve wheezed, choking as though he were once again small and asthmatic, tears running down his face before he passed out.

**

Further down the coast, the tiny vial of blood that Secretary Alexander Pierce wore around his neck cracked open with a small puff of hot air as it evaporated. He clutched a hand to his chest, excusing himself from his meeting with a plea of sudden indigestion.

“Oh dear,” he breathed, undoing his tie and pulling the silver chain out from under his clothes. The metal vial had split open along the bottom, and all that remained of its contents were little red flakes.

Normal procedure dictated that Pierce not do anything as foolish as using his own cell phone to call a Hydra base, but this was beyond normal procedure, so he called the main base in DC. The call rang and rang, and no one answered. Which meant The Asset had already broken free.

Pierce stood and looked out the windows of the Triskelion, briefly allowing himself a thought of escape. If he told no one where he went--

But that wasn’t how The Asset worked. It didn’t matter who Pierce told or where he went. Every room had a door, and he couldn’t survive without water. So it would find him.

Still. He had no intention of giving up so easily. Contacting several other bases in rapid succession and sending out an alert, he gathered his operatives from the building into the massive hangars where the Insight helicarriers lay.

Just because nothing had been able to kill The Asset _yet_ didn’t mean they wouldn’t try.

**

Steve awoke in the passenger seat of the truck he’d stolen, Natasha’s eyes fixed on the road as she drove. Blurrily Steve read the signs along the highway--they were headed north, back to D.C.

“What--”

“Don’t ask me, I don’t want to talk about it,” she spat. Smears of soot ran along one side of her face, and scorch marks marred her jacket.

“Okay,” Steve rasped. “I don’t want to think about it either. But please tell me you--” He hacked, his lungs feeling like they were full of fluid, and he somehow expected to cough up blood. “--That _you_ carried me to the car,” he finished. _You and not someone or something else,_ he didn’t say.

At this Natasha laughed, but the smile was brittle and didn’t reach her eyes.

“You are unnecessarily heavy,” she stated. “You really oughtta lose weight.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, barely a token effort, but he let out a little half-hearted snort at it anyway, because neither of them wanted to think about the horrible tomb below the earth.

**

Pierce knew The Asset was coming by the creep of gooseflesh up his arms, body responding to danger well before his conscious mind detected anything wrong. Around him, the STRIKE team shifted, too disciplined for nervous chatter but showing their fear in the shifting of their feet, the tap of a fingernail on the trigger-guard, a shaky exhale. To Pierce’s right, Agent Rumlow swallowed audibly. He’d had a post-nasal drip for weeks since taking up smoking again, and an irritating habit of clearing his throat in a truly unpleasant way that emphasized his phlegm. He thought Pierce didn’t know about the smoking, because it was only a single cigarette per day, but Pierce’s sense of smell had been keener than human baseline for more than a decade since he’d first been given the vial of blood. The flaking remains of it still stuck to the hairs on his belly.

In a distant sort of way, Pierce considered feeling anxious. But what would be the point of it? Likely he would die very soon, or (far less likely, given the battery of tests they’d subjected The Asset to) the team would kill the greatest threat the world had faced since the atom bomb. And curiosity took the sting from his impending death, because he knew The Asset wouldn’t _just_ kill him. Not with the wealth of information stored in Pierce’s mind.

The Asset stepped into the room through the floor, curving up into the space through one of its doorways. They had all expected it to use a wall, at least--but instead one of the STRIKE team fell down through the world with a small yelp of surprise, and then The Asset filled the room.

Watching as the STRIKE team died inspired a bitter spike of regret in Pierce. The Asset was called _The_ Asset, capitalized article and all, for a reason. No other person or weapon before or since could do what it did. Close beside Pierce, an agent went from firing her gun to falling down with a limb-sized hole through her torso in less time than it took to blink. Even through the industrial noise-canceling radio headphones Pierce wore the gunfire was as deafening as the end of the world, and the floor became a single huge pool of blood, the shore of a red sea.

The air in the room squirmed, filled with limbs and eyes whose gaze cut through him and the others as they died and died and died. A beautiful thing, The Asset, and a monstrosity beyond words. The legendary Hydra from which the organization took its name could not hope to compare to this.

Blinking, Pierce surveyed the suddenly-still room, what could still be seen of it around The Asset. The meat of what had been the STRIKE team glistened in the unflinching electric lights, and Pierce let out a long breath. So _this_ was how he died, surrounded by the spilled contents of some of Hydra’s best fighters. He didn’t envy whoever found this and had to attempt forensics on it.

The Asset said nothing, and they regarded each other, his single pair of eyes to its endless legion of them. No need for it to speak, they both knew how this ended.

With slippery hands Pierce removed the headset, dropping it to the ground beside him. In the sudden rush of auditory awareness as his ears were exposed, Pierce grimaced at the wet thump the headset made as he dropped it into whoever lay to his left.

The horizon of teeth opened for him, and Pierce was earnestly glad he didn’t have to see _that_ for long. “Time to answer one of the big questions, then,” he said, and a moment later silence fell.


	2. Down From the Skies

From the safety of Sam’s house, the three of them watched the news: interviews and exterior shots of buildings, and snippets of information from a massive data-dump that had just hit the web. It had been all of SHIELD's secret files, revealing the growth of Hydra within SHIELD. Video crews hadn’t been allowed into the Triskelion or any of the other newly-discovered Hydra bases throughout D.C., and police representatives looked ill as they stated for the cameras that what was inside many of the rooms should not be shown for public consumption. Nobody without clearance would be allowed into the buildings until forensics and crime scene cleaners could be brought in.

“It’s like someone put people through a meat grinder,” one officer said, visibly trembling. She looked only a thought away from vomiting. She took a breath, seeming to steel herself. “And we still can’t find the Secretary of Defense. Survivors from the Triskelion report that he left a meeting unexpectedly and then was seen departing the building, but that was almost twelve hours ago now. It’s theorized that he’s among the....uh, the mass of unidentified dead in the Triskelion or one of the other buildings.”

“But due to evidence found on every site other than the Triskelion, the other buildings have been identified as sites of a neo-Nazi organization called Hydra, correct?”

“Yes,” the officer replied, swallowing hard, her eyes damp.

“So it's also possible that the Secretary was kidnapped, brought to one of these sites, and executed?”

“We don’t know.”

“Did bombs cause the deaths?” asked the interviewer, unrelenting in the face of the officer’s obvious distress.

“No bomb could do this,” the officer replied after a too-long pause, and Sam and Steve shared a glance. Natasha stared at the screen, blank-faced. “We still have no idea what happened, but it wasn’t a bomb. No evidence of chemicals or burning. Just a lot of--”

Natasha switched off the television, and Steve sat staring at the blank screen, grinding his teeth till he heard ringing in his ears. He could feel his pulse in his knees where his fingers dug deep into the muscles.

“So Hydra still exists,” Steve growled after a pause. He jerked his chin at the TV. “And given the timing--we went to New Jersey, did what we did there, and these deaths started right after--we have to assume that Hydra has something do with....”

He trailed off, not wanting to bring up either the assassin or the place under Lehigh in front of Sam. They needed safety, and Sam had generously offered them respite last night, but something in Steve rebelled against bringing Sam into whatever this was.

A long silence stretched in the room, and in his periphery Steve could see Sam looking between them, clearly trying to figure out what was going on.

Finally Natasha let out a soundless exhalation that almost could have been a laugh. “When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight,” she murmured. "I thought I could leave some parts of my training behind. It’s one thing to be called the Black Widow as a code name, and another to actually remember why I and the others were given that title to begin with.”

Steve wrinkled up his brow, and Sam made a questioning noise. Sighing, Natasha looked at the ground, away from their eyes.

“Sam, you seem like a good guy,” she said. “There is some shit I guarantee you don’t want to know. Maybe you should step out so I can talk to Steve alone.”

Steve forced himself to turn his head to look at their host, who leaned back in his place on the couch with a calm face. Sam’s cool stare reminded Steve of Natasha herself, like Sam too could seal away whatever he’d been thinking and become a different person than the man of a moment before, horrified by what he’d seen on the screen.

“How about you let me decide that for myself,” Sam said, quiet and gentle.

“Your loss,” she shook her head. For several seconds Steve and Sam waited for her to explain herself, then Steve noticed the second set of limbs curled under her arms. And the third set below that, all of them shadowy yet iridescent.

“Natasha--” Steve began when Sam stood up, unfolding from beside Steve. Natasha looked up at him, unsmiling, and waved one of the strange limbs.

“So Sam,” she began. “There’s a lot more going on here than just problems in the intelligence community. Welcome to the bigger picture.”

Sam stared hard at Natasha, then at Steve.

“Are you gonna grow extra limbs too? Is that a thing you do?” Sam asked. Steve shook his head, wide-eyed, but Natasha jerked her chin at the dark screen where the news had been.

“That,” she stated, “is the work of an operative called the Water Soldier. He isn’t human--or not _just_ human, anyway. Steve knows I encountered him before on an op. What nobody but the now-dead leader of SHIELD knew is that that op wasn’t the first time I met the Water Soldier. He....trained me. But more than that, they....cut pieces off him, and implanted them into all the girls in the Black Widow program.”

“What the fuck,” Sam breathed, and that pretty much expressed Steve’s feelings too. Natasha’s extra limbs curled tighter around her. Had those always been there?

“Most of us didn’t survive the procedure,” Natasha went on, as if giving any other mission report. “But they wanted monsters, so killing a lot of little girls didn’t matter to them. I was one of the lucky ones who got out alive.” She sighed, looking into Steve, her eyes bright greenish-blue like ocean water and the pupils a road into somewhere deep and dark and cold. “I’m not what the Water Soldier is, I’m still mostly human. But maybe nobody else could have traced the origin of that flash drive you took from Fury, or gotten you out of that basement alive. There’s magic at work here, and they trained me in that as well as other skills.”

Steve looked at her. At the face he knew well, and the strange, distressing parts he didn’t. He hadn’t trusted either her or Fury before, had hated their changeability and secrecy. But look where that distrust had led him: being attacked in SHIELD headquarters by his own team, Hydra throughout the city, Fury dead, and walking into Zola’s private hell woefully unprepared for what they’d found there. When this had just seemed like governmental bullshit, he’d been angry at Natasha for her part in it, but now....

“Everyone’s a monster in this line of work. Comparatively, this isn’t so bad,” Steve told her. She stared at him, eyes wide, then up at Sam, who laughed.

“Can’t say I disagree,” Sam said, shrugging as though he’d seen worse things than sudden non-human limbs. Maybe he had. “Combat fucks everybody up. It’s just that most people come home with less limbs, not more.”

The air eased, and then it was just Natasha as Steve had always known her, with normal grey-green eyes and simple human arms.

“I owe you for helping me out in New Jersey,” Steve said, because that too was a truth. But she shook her head.

“Whatever was in that basement needed to be destroyed,” Natasha countered. “I didn’t want to be the one to see it or do it, but I’m glad it’s done. You don’t owe me anything.”

Whether from some protective intuition or simple politeness at not wanting to pry into something he wasn’t a part of, Sam didn’t ask for this to be explained. He did cross the living room, though, leaning one arm on the wall before turning to hold them in a quiet stare.

“There’s clearly something going on here,” Sam began. He gestured at Natasha, then the TV. “You having weirdass limbs, hundreds of people turning up chewed apart in secure bases--I’m not gonna fake like I understand this. But I _want_ to. This is the kind of thing you either pretend never happened or you look right at and try your best to understand. And I’m not the type to look away from a hard thing.”

Natasha smiled, but Steve shook his head, a pit opening up under his breastbone. He’d come here for a safe-house, not this.

“I can’t ask you to do this, Sam,” Steve tried to explain. “What’s going on here involves some ugly things. Hidden things. You got out for a good reason, and this--”

“Dude,” Sam interrupted him. “Captain America needs my help, and comes with a friend with tentacles? There’s no better reason to get back in.” His gaze stayed unruffled, but his arms crossed over his belly like he was insecure--fear of rejection, Steve realized after a moment. And he remembered going to all the recruitment offices trying to follow Bucky into the War, desperate to be a part of the action and do something real.

Steve turned to Natasha. “So what is it we’re doing? The Nazi organization I died to take down has bases all over the capitol, SHIELD is full of their agents, and the thing that killed Fury is somehow mixed up in this.”

To Steve’s surprise, Natasha smiled grimly, as though recalling something private and grim.

“If you assume the Water Soldier is responsible for the carnage in the Hydra bases, and that the dead are all Hydra agents, you can assume he was owned by Hydra until yesterday. And I personally can tell you that the Water Soldier wasn’t brainwashed like the Widows--he followed orders because he had no choice. His handlers had him under some kind of compulsion. Even with that, he tried to...." she paused, looking briefly uncomfortable, "...help me break free, when I was small. It didn’t work, I didn’t listen, but when I did eventually defect, I remembered what he did for me.”

Sam stared hard at her, feeling his brows pinch up over his nose. “So this Water Soldier is, what, an ally?”

“We’d better hope so,” Natasha said with a mirthless grin. “But at least now we know who is _not_ his ally. For now, that has to be enough--because we should try to contact him.”

“He killed Fury!” Steve spat, rising from the couch. “He may not be our enemy, but surely--”

“What part of _compulsion_ do you not understand?” Natasha shot back, leaning against the arm of the couch as though perfectly comfortable. “What we did yesterday--that was connected to him somehow. The timing is too perfect otherwise.”

Steve remembered Zola’s horrible corpse, mind trapped for decades in the darkness. He'd spent three years hoping Zola was in Hell, if Hell existed, and he supposed in a way his wish had come true.

“‘I called the ocean and it came,’” Steve murmured, and Natasha’s eyes narrowed. Sam just looked confused. Steve shot him an apologetic glance, but still couldn’t make himself describe the awfulness of that place to this good man. “The thing in the basement told me something about this,” Steve told Natasha, hoping Sam would not ask. “He said he’d summoned something and bound it into a human body, and then someone else trapped him in that place because the thing he’d summoned was bound to his life somehow.”

Natasha nodded as if this made sense to her, eyes wide and vulnerable again.

“So we freed the man who tried to free me,” she whispered. Then she seemed to steel herself. “If he’s hunting down Hydra agents, we should figure out where else Hydra has bases and see if we can find the Soldier at one of those sites.”

At this, she looked at Sam, and Steve could see her figuring out how to explain the situation. “The people we’re up against have--or had--control of one of the strongest creatures I’ve ever known. They managed to kill one of the most successfully paranoid men I’ve ever met. And they hid their existence in the middle of an _intelligence agency_ right up until the Director’s assassination.”

But Sam only laughed, his posture now relaxed since Steve had accepted him into whatever mad mission this would turn out to be. “Well, they say you can tell a lot about a person by who their enemies are. So this all paints you two in a flattering light.”

Though Steve didn’t want Sam involved in whatever this was, Steve had to admit he was glad Sam had chosen this on his own. They needed more allies.

Strangely enough, it turned out Sam had a few extra limbs of his own too. His just weren’t magical.

**

Within a week they had Sam’s wings back and had combed through enough of the Hydra data dump to have a list of twenty nearby Hydra bases to hit. The fact that there were that many within driving distance of D.C. alarmed all three of them, but the fact that the Water Soldier had been mowing through other local bases at an equally alarming rate was some reassurance.

But when they were in the middle of debating which base had the highest likelihood of being the next target of the Water Soldier, _he_ found _them_.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the west-facing windows as the three sat clustered around one end of Sam’s dining room table. A map lay spread open, marked with a variety of colored dots denoting bases already destroyed and those yet to be destroyed. Trying to find any reliable pattern in the Water Soldier’s choice of bases, other than ‘near D.C.’, was proving difficult even for Natasha.

Just when it seemed as though they would have to pick one at random, a doorway quietly opened across from them and the Soldier walked through it. Within the space of blinking Natasha stood, one of her concealed guns trained on the Soldier’s face.

In the comfortable homely space of Sam’s house, the Soldier looked even more disturbing than before. The sun shone upon the black leather of his armor, glittered on the plates of his metal left arm, and somehow both did and didn’t touch the other limbs. A mask covered his entire face, including his eyes.

Steve didn’t bother to stand, sitting frozen in place. If the Soldier wished to kill them, they were probably already dead, and Steve’s shield was in the bedroom. From everything Natasha had told them, there was little point in trying to fight back. So instead Steve stared as his mind tried and failed to understand those limbs.

A voice filled the room, rumbling up through Steve’s ribs and shaking all the tender parts of him so that he shuddered, eyelids fluttering. It spoke in what he thought was Russian, and Natasha lowered her gun.

“So you do remember me,” she whispered back.

 **OF COURSE WE REMEMBER YOU** , the Soldier replied in English this time, and Steve’s skin broke out in gooseflesh, rippling over him in a tide. Beside him a small groan escaped Sam, whose hands fisted upon the tabletop. **WE REMEMBER EVERYTHING, AND YOU CARRY A PART OF US IN YOU. WE ALWAYS KNEW WHERE YOU WERE. WE HAVE BEEN SO PROUD OF WHAT YOU BECAME.**

With special care, Natasha put the safety back on her gun, set it down on the table, and crossed the room to where the Soldier stood. She looked so small beside him, both his big human frame and the mass of limbs that seemed to multiply as she approached. The seething shapes drew her in, folding her close to the Soldier’s body.

Half of Steve’s mind screamed at him to jump up and protect her, the other half sat breathless and tender-hearted as he listened to the sigh she let out as he held her close. Perhaps Steve ought to leave? The Soldier’s movements clearly didn’t need to be tracked anymore, and this was a private moment.

But a moment later she pulled away, stepping back with misty eyes. Then the Soldier reached up to remove first his goggles, laying them on the table, and next the mask that concealed the lower half of his face. Then he looked straight at Steve.

The room receded around Steve as though he were falling through a tunnel. All he could see was the Soldier’s face, a face he had kissed and mourned and memorized and _loved_. Everything in Steve’s body started to reach out, making him stand from his chair--

Then Steve’s fingernails dug into his sweating palms, and he pulled his hands back, tightening his shoulders to keep them there. His heart hammered under his aching breastbone as his lips curled away from his teeth.

“How _dare_ you mimic him,” he growled, only just keeping himself from shouting. “Whatever you’re trying to do by getting a rise out of me, stop it right now.”

But the Soldier, wearing Bucky’s dead features, only leaned his head away so that the brown hair fell back, revealing more of his cheekbones.

 **YOUR FRIEND IS NOT DEAD** , the Soldier said. **WE CAME TO YOU FOR A REASON. MY ENERGY IS ENDLESS, BUT HIS HUMAN BODY HAS NOT BEEN ALLOWED REST FOR TOO LONG. HE HAS BEEN PATIENT WITH ME AS I’VE STARTED WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE BUT HE WILL WAIT NO LONGER. HE ASKED ME TO BRING HIM HERE TO YOU, STEVE.**

Steve wanted to vomit, guts rebelling against this monster. He wanted to die, he wanted to kill this squirming abomination wearing his dead friend’s visage, and he wanted to burn the world for allowing such a thing.

And Steve wanted to rush across the room, cradle that face in his hands, wrap his arms around that waist and not ever let go. How often had he told himself he would do anything to have Bucky back again? He’d been willing to die to greet Bucky in Heaven.

Several seconds passed and in the silence Steve thought that if this was an illusion, it was a strange one. Steve could see both his childhood companion in that face _and_ the man Bucky would have aged to become. There were lines on his brow and around his eyes which hadn’t been there when Bucky had died, more flesh on his cheeks and under his chin from weight gained. And his jawline bore the beginnings of a beard that Bucky would have been embarrassed to show in public, back in the days before the War when he’d painstakingly shaved every morning, vain about his clear skin and fine jawline. Why would this monster make those alterations a part of the lie? If this face were meant to trick Steve somehow, why not just replicate Bucky as Steve had seen him in those last moments falling from the train?

Slowly, legs feeling shaky and coltish as they had when he’d first stepped out of the Vita-Ray machine, Steve crossed the room to where the Soldier stood. The Soldier watched him impassively, arms loose by his sides.

 **HE DOES NOT REMEMBER WHAT I HAVE DONE THIS WEEK** , the Soldier continued. **WE AGREED THAT I SHOULD KEEP THAT FROM HIM. HE ONLY REMEMBERS SEEING YOU, WHEN WE ATTACKED NICHOLAS FURY.**

Words boiled up from Steve’s belly, his eyes aching with holding back burning tears.

“What do you mean _he_ doesn’t remember?--”

But the awful limbs were gone, the glowing gold of the Soldier’s eyes faded into simple human grey-blue, his posture relaxed, and then Bucky stood there, blinking against the bright light coming through the windows. His hands flexed, pupils dilating visibly as his gaze settled on Steve.

“You’re real,” Bucky murmured, and smiled, looking like he’d stepped right out of one of Steve’s dreams. Or nightmares, maybe. “You’re really alive. Yob said you were, for _years_ they said you were still alive, but I still didn’t think--”

Steve’s body felt like _it_ had died somehow. He could feel tears coming down his face but he couldn’t move, couldn’t make himself say anything. After a second, he managed to press his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then his lungs came unstuck and he drew in a long gasp.

He _knew_ that voice. Even more than he knew that face, he knew that voice.

But then Bucky slowly collapsed. One knee trembled first before giving out so he dropped, and all at once Steve’s own limbs remembered how to move and he caught the heavy body against his chest. The metal arm pressed cold against Steve’s side, fingers gripping into Steve’s shirt and pulling it tight around his hips. Craning his neck around, Steve looked desperately at Sam, who trotted over as Steve lowered both of them to the ground.

“I’m a field medic, if you need help,” Sam murmured, his voice soft and calm.

“I don’t know,” Bucky mumbled against Steve’s chest. “They mod’fied me ‘fore they even called Yob Shoggoth through. And more after.”

“Yob Shoggoth--that’s the, er….” Sam trailed off.

“The Great One,” Bucky mumbled, his beard prickling through Steve’s shirt. Steve couldn’t make himself think of anything else beyond that little sensation on his shoulder, a fact for which he was distantly grateful, even though he knew he would probably panic later. Then Bucky jerked, seeming to startle awake. “Steve--Is Steve here? I saw him--”

“I’m here, Buck,” Steve whispered, squeezing the muscles of Bucky’s right shoulder. Bucky immediately relaxed again, sagging into Steve’s body.

“You’re fading in and out, man. How long since you last slept?” Sam asked.

“I don’....dunno. I dunno how long Yob had the body. They said they’d lemme back in when I was wi’ Steve.”

Sam met Steve’s eyes and just shrugged. “I feel like we should scan you for trackers or listening bugs, but we don’t have the tech for that here. How about you sleep for a while and see how you feel?”

Given the softening of Bucky’s limbs again, Steve rather thought Bucky had pre-empted the question. So without thinking about it further, because Steve’s thoughts had been replaced by a buzzing emptiness, Steve picked up the body that looked so much like his friend and carried him through to Sam’s guest bedroom where Steve himself had been staying. The machinery in the metal arm whirred and ticked as Bucky twitched in his sleep. That was strange, and it was stranger still that the metal arm stayed when the other wrong things left, but not half so strange as everything else these days. Steve laid Bucky, or whatever was looking like Bucky, out on the bed before pulling the blankets up from out of their neat military tuck and wrapping them around Bucky’s shoulders. Then Steve sat on the bedside, considering the body beside his. A stillness overtook him as he stared at that face and felt nothing.

The way Bucky breathed in his sleep now _sounded_ like the way Bucky had always breathed in the middle of the night when back pain and sciatica had kept Steve awake and he had lain curled up around Bucky’s side trying to distract himself from how much he hurt by listening to the sound of Bucky’s breathing.

Behind him, Steve heard someone else enter the room. Sam, by the sound of the tread.

“I brought a glass of water and some cookies, for when he wakes up. How’re you doing?”

“I don’t know if it’s him,” Steve replied distantly, still staring at the familiar lines of the man’s mouth, eyes, chin. “Maybe it’s a trap, or a lie. Is it wrong if I don’t care?”

Sam came up behind Steve, setting the cup and a plate of Oreos onto the nightstand.

“I dunno. If something otherworldly showed up wearing Riley’s face, I dunno how I’d respond either. And given the amount of weird here, I guess necromancy isn't out of the question.”

“I want it to be him,” Steve went on, because the spread of Bucky’s eyelashes was just how he remembered. He smelled like ozone and gunpowder, metal and machine oil from the arm, and leather from his armor. And like the ocean, like deep water full of life. “The first year I was awake after the ice, I kept seeing his face everywhere. I’d think I’d catch sight of him out of the corner of my eye, but it was never him. This....”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. Then Natasha walked in. Letting them hear her footsteps, Steve supposed.

“I never saw him without his mask,” she said, her voice even. “So I never knew what his human face looked like. And when he spoke it was always the big voice. But this is the same entity I knew in childhood, so if he says this is your friend, I’m inclined to believe him. Or _them_ , perhaps.”

A shudder ran down Steve’s spine. Time passed, and Sam and Natasha left the room. Their voices came down the hall, Natasha asking Sam about himself. Then came noises of pots and pans, and the smell of cooking, and though Steve’s stomach growled he couldn’t make himself move even enough to take one of the cookies from the bedside.

**

Two hours later, Bucky startled awake, drawing a sharp breath in through his nose. His lids flickered, his arms moved under the sheets, then his eyes muzzily wandered the room. When he fixed on Steve, there was that smile again.

“Did you sit there this whole time?” Bucky asked, laughter hidden in his words before he looked down and grimaced. “Ugh, you let me sleep in my uniform. And even my boots, what the hell.”

Without thinking, Steve laughed too, straightening up at last. Bucky pushed back the blankets, sat up--a little shakily, Steve noticed--and began undoing the clasps on the thick leather armor he wore.

“Feels strange being in full control again. It’s been a while,” Bucky murmured. Steve stared at him, feeling his brows draw down.

“What does that mean?”

Bucky glanced at him briefly before looking away, and then he sighed, pulling his arms out of the leather. Under it, he wore a black shirt. He bent to start unlacing his boots.

“Let it go for now, huh? I don’t want to explain when I’m still this tired.”

The urge to protest rose along with Steve’s gorge, a wave of nausea overtaking him. But he swallowed it down, breathing deeply in and out, and then just nodded.

“So you know Natalia,” Bucky asked. “She was so small when we first met her. Maybe eight years old.”

Steve heard the ‘we’ and forced himself not to respond to it. A boot thumped down onto the carpet.

“I'm never all that sure what she says that I can trust,” Steve replied. “When you showed up it was obvious she was telling the truth that you two didn’t just meet on a mission in Iran, though.”

Bucky winced, looking away. “I don’t remember that. I just remember when she was little. We saw her at different ages, but I never saw her older than fourteen.”

“But you--” Steve began and then stopped himself, uncertain what to say. Bucky pulled his second boot off and let out a sigh of relief, wiggling his toes, and that somehow pulled the words loose from Steve. “But you remember me?”

For a moment Bucky simply sat, socked feet flexing back and forth. Then his mouth tightened.

“Yeah, Steve. I remember you. Of course I remember you. The fact that Yob said you were still alive is all that kept me going, sometimes.”

Then Bucky stiffened, stare going distant before morphing into a bright, bottomless gold. Steve pulled back, standing to get away from him.

 **I DESTROYED THE A.I., AND I HAD HOPED TOO MANY WERE DEAD TO THINK OF LAUNCHING THE HELICARRIERS** , the enormous voice poured into the room, tremoring not just the air but the liquids of Steve’s body as well and seeming to turn the house several degrees sideways as it did so. **BUT THEY ARE GOING UP.** Bucky’s face turned to look at Steve, though it was no longer Bucky in it. **COME WITH ME. YOU MAY AS WELL SEE WHAT WE TRULY ARE.**

Bucky swung his legs over the side of the mattress, standing smoothly. Limbs slid into existence around him, and Sam and Natasha came running down the hall. Bucky, or the thing wearing him, nodded at them.

**YOU SHOULD COME TOO. YOU DESERVE TO SEE THIS FOR YOURSELF.**

He strode to the wall, reached out, and pulled a door into existence. Steve’s eyes protested at the sight of it, and even more at the sunset vista of the Potomac River beyond. In the distance, great flat shapes rose over the skyline.

Project Insight.

Bucky walked through in his stocking-feet, striding toward the river bank, and Steve followed him, helpless to resist. When Natasha and Sam piled along too, Steve turned back to look at where they’d come from and saw only the blank wall of a small shed on the riverbank.

A great ripple went out over the water as Bucky touched the shore. First he was in up to his knees, then his waist, then the top of his head vanished under the surface. Steve suppressed the urge to dive in after, as though Bucky might somehow drown.

Something huge and dark moved under the waters, which seethed and bulged upward. Points of light shifted in the murky depths as the shadow of one of the immense rafts rose overhead, going east. And then a limb almost too big to understand rose from the river, followed by another, and then another. They were the length of a skyscraper, big enough to dwarf everything around them. Great eyes the size of houses glittered along their skin, vivid colors around inhuman pupils. The leviathan wrapped upward around the helicarrier, pulling it down to the waters below which rose up before subsiding into calm again.

A shaking began in the muscles along Steve’s ribs, a tremble that then ran down through his limbs. Steve fell to his knees, limbs nerveless and weak. To his right, Sam breathed, “Oh, God.”

Further up the river, the second helicarrier fell, then the third. The sound of the metal curling in on itself in that behemoth embrace ripped through the air like a scream.

They waited--beside him Sam let out a kind of sob, and Natasha walked down to the muddy shore.

A few minutes later, Bucky walked out to meet her, dripping and human except for the eyes, which stared into each of them before he walked again to the side of the shed, pulling the nonexistent door back open.

**COME, BEFORE WE ARE FOUND.**

They followed.

**

The thing wearing Bucky’s body walked straight into the guest bedroom, pausing just inside the bathroom, and Steve followed because....well, he wasn’t certain why. Sam rushed past them to his own bathroom, where the sounds of vomiting immediately followed. Natasha went after him.

Steve stood, regarding the monster in the room as though from far away. He felt as though he were falling, as though the whole world were rushing past him while he stood perfectly still. He was looking at Bucky’s familiar face, but he wasn’t really seeing it and it wasn’t really Bucky.

 **YOU ARE DISSOCIATING** , the thing in Bucky said, and the way the words rolled through Steve jolted him into focusing, just a little. **THAT IS A NORMAL HUMAN RESPONSE TO SEEING ANY SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF ME. BUT JAMES’ BODY STILL NEEDS REST, SO HE NEEDS YOU TO BE CALM SO THAT HE DOES NOT PANIC. IN HIS UNDERSTANDING OF TIME, HE HAS WAITED A VERY LONG TIME TO SEE YOU.**

Steve stared at the thing glowing out of his dead friend’s eyes, and then Steve shook himself. He could still see the dark shapes stretching up, endlessly reaching, but he forced his mind away from that and onto thoughts of Bucky being here and alive and _tired_.

“I, uh--” Steve stammered, blinking. “Right, that’s--of course. Give me a moment.”

Walking out into the living room, Steve first attended to his breathing. Long breaths in and out as he paced around the room, over and over till his heart rate slowed down. Then he thudded the flats of his hands onto his arms and chest, down his belly and thighs, and then gently onto his face and neck until he started to feel more like he fit into his own skin. It was something Bruce had taught him after a bad fight which had left several of the Avengers distant and overwhelmed.

Steve turned his thoughts away from that too. It was like trying to contain a spill, thoughts flowing into each other and onward to new thoughts, but after another few breaths the feeling of Steve’s own hands on his body began to calm him down.

When Steve felt almost normal, he returned to the guest bedroom. The bright-eyed thing standing in the doorway watched him, clothes still dripping onto the carpet, and Steve gave it a curt nod.

The outside presence in Bucky retreated all at once, and Steve saw the exact moment when humanity returned to Bucky’s face. Bucky blinked rapidly, drew in a shuddering breath, and his shoulders relaxed.

“Do you need a shower?” Steve asked, and Bucky looked down at himself.

“No,” he replied, and with a strange twitch whose movement Steve couldn’t quite follow with his eyes, Bucky was suddenly dry. A second later he listed to the side, though, metal shoulder hitting the door frame with a thunk. Without thinking Steve took his elbow and wrapped an arm around Bucky’s back.

“C’mon, you belong in bed.”

Even dry, Bucky still smelled like the river, mud and algae and cold air. Unselfconscious, he unbuttoned his combat trousers, made of bulletproof fabric with armored knees, and peeled them off himself till he was in just a shirt and briefs.

Steve tried to protect himself from the rush of memories of those thighs wrapped around him in Brooklyn and pinning him down in Italy, but they came regardless. Blushing so hot that he itched under his clothes, Steve led Bucky to the bed and pulled down the messy covers he’d untucked earlier in the day.

“Stay with me,” Bucky asked, his voice low. “I know it’s stupid, but I keep thinking that if I let you leave, you’ll disappear.”

Steve considered Bucky’s expression, trying to determine what this meant. Was it a sign of mental instability? A come-on? Some sort of trap? But after a pause, Steve simply realized that since he wasn’t hungry (thanks to having just listened to Sam throwing up) he might as well stay. He began to seat himself at the bedside, but Bucky pulled Steve down onto the mattress instead, curling around his side and huffing warm exhalations onto Steve’s shoulder. Bucky fell asleep almost immediately.

Lying in Sam’s soft guest bed, staring up at the ceiling with a heavy metal arm laid out over Steve’s belly, a sweet, welcome force tugged down Steve’s eyelids too. For a few minutes he fought it, listening to Natasha soothing Sam in the next room, until despite his best effort Steve slid into dreams.

**

Stars glittered overhead, bright enough to make Steve wince and look away. Keeping himself afloat took work, too, and Steve grew tired, so at last he sank gratefully under the waves. When he opened his mouth the water filled him more intimately than any kiss. He pulled it deeper into him, inhaling it down until it filled his lungs and cradled his heart.

The depths below him glittered not with stars but with eyes. They looked up at him, patient and curious, until he nodded his consent. The Great One embraced him, drawing him down into the welcoming darkness. The limb that held him pressed silky soft around Steve’s body.

“Where am I?” Steve asked.

 **MY HOME** , the Great One told him, words rippling up Steve’s spine to settle at the base of his skull. **WHEN YOU LOOK OUT ONTO YOUR OCEANS, THEY LOOK ENDLESS TO YOUR LIMITED EYES. BUT YOUR WORLD IS AS SMALL AS YOUR VISION. HERE, BEYOND YOUR UNIVERSE, THERE IS AN OCEAN THAT IS TRULY WITHOUT END. THIS IS WHERE MY KIND LIVE.**

“There are others like you?”

**YES.**

The Great One carried him down, down, down, to where forests grew safe from the vicious touch of any sun, and showed him beautiful, secret places.

**

Steve blinked into consciousness, choking on harsh air--his lungs missed the slow cushion of water, the sluice of it through his throat and ribs. Several seconds passed before Steve managed to make sense of the shapes and colors and resolve them into Sam’s guest bedroom.

Then Steve realized that what had woken him was his stomach growling loudly, complaining about the fact that he was a supersoldier, it was now late evening, and he hadn’t eaten since just after lunch. The noise then woke Bucky too, who startled against Steve’s side and made his own unhappy grumbling sound.

“Ugh, shut up, I’d forgotten how loud your guts are.”

The laugh that escaped Steve surprised him, and he stroked his thumb across the metal knuckles in fond acceptance of Bucky’s long-known hatred of being woken from naps. But then Steve blinked at the ceiling--because how would any imitation of Bucky get such a thing right?

The reality of the situation crashed down on him like the helicarriers, and Steve needed to escape. He pushed the metal arm away to extricate himself but as though sensing the shift, Bucky grabbed his shirt-front, rising up on one elbow to look Steve in the face. For several seconds Steve looked away, but then he caved, relaxing back into the bed and meeting those all-too-familiar eyes.

“Steve--” Bucky began, then swallowed. “Look, before you go eat--I know you have questions, okay. I know this is a lot to accept. But please--you have to believe it’s me.”

“Why do I have to believe that?” Steve asked before he could help himself, then bit his tongue to keep from saying more. “Sorry, no--that’s not a fair thing to ask.”

“It is, though,” Bucky sighed. “You have no reason to believe me except that I want you to.”

“ _I_ want to believe,” Steve whispered, and looked away from Bucky again. “More than anything, I want to believe this is you, and you’ve found your way back to me.”

Bucky’s breath was warm against Steve’s cheek, and even smelling of the river and of machinery and too many things that weren’t familiar, the feel of his lips against Steve’s temple felt like home.

“I did, Steve. We found our way to you.”

 _We, our._ Because even if this was Bucky now, it wasn’t Bucky alone. Were they even alone in this room now, or was the other thing lurking in Bucky somewhere, like a kraken below the surface of the ocean?

Bucky subsided back into the bed, and though he pressed his knuckles into Steve’s chest for a moment, he then withdrew.

“I’m still so tired. Will you eat, and then come back?”

“Yes,” Steve agreed. Because despite everything, that was what he wanted too.


	3. From Beyond the Limits of the World

Bucky spent the next twenty-four hours sleeping and eating in alternation, and Steve spent the time with him. When Steve slept, he dreamed again of the endless ocean, and the Great One who welcomed him there. Steve didn’t dare ask if the dreams were real or not, fearing what the answer might be.

At nine the second morning after Bucky’s return, Natasha walked into the guest bedroom.

“I hope you’re decent,” she deadpanned, staring at both of them with her eyebrows raised as though she actually hoped they weren’t. Bucky snorted, curling deeper into the pillows. But then Natasha went on, “I called Stark. He’ll be here in an hour with transportation for all of us. There are Hydra bases all over the country, and unlike some operatives I could name, I don’t want to laze around while Hydra regroups.”

Steve felt rather than saw Bucky stiffen, so he looked over at the blanketed lump.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to meet Tony Stark,” Bucky murmured, just loud enough that Natasha could probably catch it.

“And why’s that?” she demanded.

“We killed his parents. Or....Yob did. That was one of the jobs they wouldn’t let me remember.”

The cold numbness that had found Steve after returning from the Potomak swept over him again, leaving him frozen and far away from his body. He couldn’t breathe, muscles locked into place.

“That was you?” Natasha said, sounding surprised but not particularly upset. Then she made a noise of disgust. “That is the sort of thing Hydra would do, I guess. Well fine then. Sam and I will go with him, and you and Steve can do whatever you want. Any longer here, though, and you’ll be discovered. So unless you want to go back to combat--”

“No,” Bucky snapped immediately, and Natasha carried right on as if she’d expected that.

“--then Sam and I need outside backup, and Steve will want to be with you.”

Steve forced himself to blink, then dragged a ragged lungful of air into himself. In that moment, he missed the sweet weight of the deep ocean water more than ever. That fact frightened him too. Because Natasha was right, Steve wanted to be wherever Bucky was, but Steve had assumed they would both join the fight again as soon as Bucky had rested. If Steve wasn’t going to fight Hydra, then what was even the point of him?

“I should--we should--” Bucky began, then sighed and sat up, blankets falling down around him. Steve still couldn’t make himself move. Bucky ran his flesh hand through his hair, tidying it. “We should talk to Stark. He deserves to know. Yob told me when we came here that we’d have to, sooner or later. Guess it’s sooner.”

“Be prepared for him to be volatile, then,” Natasha said, and walked back out. Several achingly long seconds passed before Bucky looked down at Steve.

The dark circles around Bucky’s eyes had faded only a little in the last day. Now, with Tony’s arrival impending, he looked more tired than ever. For a split second, Steve hated Natasha for calling Tony, for bringing him here and shattering the tiny island of calm that denial had formed around them. For one day, it had just been Bucky and Steve in Sam’s cosy guest bedroom, and nothing else had existed.

“Howard and his wife?” Steve begged, not quite asking Bucky to refute his earlier words. Bucky didn’t. 

“There’s things you don’t know about us yet,” Bucky answered instead, and Steve’s jaw tightened up, angry at the condescension as much as the revelation--as if he didn’t already know that! “But Howard’s son deserves that hear about this from us before anyone else does.”

Steve closed his eyes. He wished this weren’t happening. He wished none of this had happened--except he couldn’t wish that without wishing Bucky gone. It felt like Steve had opened a door into one of his nightmares: Bucky returned from the dead but inhabited by something horrible, having killed Howard and Maria Stark.

“So you're going to tell Tony when he arrives?” Steve asked, already planning escape routes and other places to stay in New York other than the Avengers Tower. When anxious, make plans.

“I don’t know,” Bucky sighed. “Is sooner better? Or worse? I’m still so tired. I don’t even know how many years it’s been since I really got to sleep.”

“....years?” Steve asked without really wanting to know the answer. He swung himself out of the bed at last, crossing over to where Sam had kindly loaned them both some clothes and pulling on fresh sweats and a shirt.

“Hydra kept us under tight control. They developed what they called a pocket dimension, a place outside of the world they kept us when we weren’t in use. Like having a cross-dimensional gun safe where you keep your weapons,” Bucky sighed bitterly, the new lines around his eyes deepening. “Except worse. I barely remember it--Yob says it’s because the human mind isn’t designed to do well in spaces like that.” He snorted. “But at least my body didn’t age while we were in there. In terms of actual time spent alive in the world, I’m maybe only six years older than when you saw me last.”

At first that was a relief to hear, because six years was so much less than seventy, but then Steve realized that still meant _six years_ spent inhabited by something from another world while under the control of Hydra.

“Well you always joked about being my older man,” Steve replied, wan as he finger-combed his hair into order, looking into the mirror hanging on the bedroom wall. Before this, the difference in their ages had only been a single year. Now it was more like four years.

A thought occurred to Steve then.

“How did....Yob....even know I was alive? Did he--er, they?--did they see me on a mission or something?”

Bucky winced at Steve’s awkwardness over the name and pronouns.

“No. They could feel you, out in the world, even in the Arctic. Yob just knows where things are. I can’t explain it, but maybe they could, if you ask them about it.”

Steve walked out of the room, not willing to say that he didn’t want anything to do with the creature. He was pretty sure his silence said it for him, though.

**

Tony showed up with several drivers and security guards in a trio of sleek black cars. Steve felt grateful that at least the cars weren’t red, which meant Tony had made a nod at keeping this a covert operation. Black cars were covert, for him.

Sam opened the door and Tony came in like a whirlwind, shaking Sam’s hand and immediately spinning him up into a storm of questions about the wing-pack, its power source, and if Sam wanted a whole slew of upgrades. Steve knew that this meant Tony already liked Sam and was feeling anxious about the situation in the capitol, but Sam looked a bit stunned.

Perhaps Bucky was being kind by walking in then, or maybe it was his native sense of dramatic timing reasserting itself. He’d always known how to command a room, and Steve remembered a number of times when Bucky had sung in one of the queer bars in their neighborhood and it had felt like this, as though all eyes were naturally and inevitably drawn to him. Steve watched Tony glance away from Sam’s face for a second and immediately fix on Bucky.

“So Natasha wasn’t just fucking with me!” Tony crowed. “We really did get a two-for-one special on World War Two memorabilia! First we got Captain America himself, and now we get the one and only Bucky Barnes! I’m sorry to say that my father only masturbated a little over your memory, nothing like the outpouring he made over Steve-O here. But what’s this delicious addition?”

Bucky’s face froze even as he held out his hand for Tony to shake it, and Tony ignored the flesh-and-bone right hand entirely and grabbed the metal left arm, pulling it palm-up and manipulating its fingers. To Steve’s surprise, Bucky let him.

“Not the only alteration Hydra made to me,” Bucky told him. “I’d like you to meet my plus-one.”

“I’ve already met Steve--” Tony began, and then it wasn’t Bucky anymore, Yob Shoggoth visibly filling Bucky’s body like water poured into clear glass. Limbs crowded into place around him, flowing around Tony’s hands.

The sight made Steve’s nipples tighten at the same time as his stomach turned over. For a second Tony looked exactly like Steve felt, but the shock faded out of him fast, and then Tony’s laser-focus and fascination with new things turned on, his eyes traveling over the limbs and eyes with obvious delight.

“Holy fuck,” Tony crowed. “What are _you_? Are you separate from Barnes, or is this a multiple personalities thing as well as a tentacles thing? Have I walked into a crazypants hentai?”

**THE ANSWERS TO YOUR FIRST TWO QUESTIONS ARE COMPLICATED, TONY STARK. BUT I HAVE ANTICIPATED MEETING YOU FOR SOME TIME. WE NEED TO TALK.**

Yob Shoggoth’s voice bent the room around it as usual, but Tony barely even reacted aside from rolling his eyes.

“Oh my god no. No, my cyborg tentacle dreamboat isn’t giving me a relationship talk when we’ve barely met, what the hell. That voice, though--how is your body even producing that? That can’t be coming from a human voicebox.”

Along one side of the room, Natasha suppressed a smile, but she also slunk out and away, quietly pulling Sam after her. Tony didn’t seem to notice, hands still wrapped up in the crowd of limbs.

**DO YOU PREFER DIFFICULT INFORMATION DELIVERED GENTLY?**

Steve wasn’t sure how he’d expected this to go, but it already wasn’t what he’d imagined. Despite the massive scope of the voice, the question was asked softly, tone careful. But Tony only let out a nervous laugh, now clearly examining the tendrils to distract himself.

“What on earth could you possibly have to tell me? Please don’t say my father was Hydra, I couldn’t handle that.”

The thing in Bucky shook his head, glowing eyes fixed on Tony’s face.

**HE WAS NOT. HE HAD FINALLY RECREATED THE SUPERSOLDIER SERUM, AND WAS BRINGING SAMPLES OF IT TO SHIELD. BECAUSE OF THIS, HYDRA WANTED HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE SERUM AND ALSO WANTED HIM DEAD. WHICH IS WHY THEY SENT ME FOR HIM. YOUR MOTHER’S LIFE WAS, TO THEM, MERELY COLLATERAL DAMAGE.**

Steve saw the moment Tony locked up, expression fixing itself into place and eyes blanking. One second of silence passed, and then two, before Tony’s mouth twitched. Steve stepped forward, wondering if he should intervene, but one of the limbs stretched across the room and stopped him, curling around his arm and holding him in place. The softness of the skin brought up gooseflesh all along that side of Steve’s body before he pulled away.

“She died in a car crash,” Tony protested, something in his face looking far younger than his age. He hadn’t expected any of this in coming here, and Steve couldn’t help the pity he felt. “It was ruled an accident, but I always figured my father had eloped with one of his lovers and abandoned us. So I thought maybe she crashed on purpose.”

**HE DID NOT, AND WHILE THE CRASH WAS NOT A MISTAKE, IT WAS NOT HER FAULT. BOTH OF YOUR PARENTS WERE IN THE CAR THAT NIGHT. THEY SAW ME IN THE ROAD AND SWERVED, EXACTLY AS HYDRA MEANT THEM TO. THEY BOTH WOULD HAVE SURVIVED THE CRASH IF NOT FOR ME.**

At this Tony’s eyes lifted to Yob’s face, searching those inhuman eyes for something as Tony’s own expression hardened.

“So _then_ what?” he bit out, vicious and low.

**HYDRA BELIEVED HOWARD MUST HAVE TOLD MARIA SOMETHING OF HIS RESEARCH, GIVEN THAT SHE WAS IN THE CAR WITH HIM AND THE SAMPLES. THEY MADE ME KILL HER. I MADE SURE IT WAS PAINLESS. I TOLD HER SHE HAD NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF, AND LOOKED INTO HER EYES AS SHE WENT.**

Tony’s chest rose in a shuddering breath, and Steve saw the tears come into Tony’s eyes. Steve's own prickled in sympathy, imagining this happening to a woman who probably hadn’t wanted anything to do with any of this. At that Steve’s legs folded him nervelessly onto the couch.

At least the curtains were closed so no one outside could see this. Natasha had insisted on that all week.

“You--you--” Tony shuddered, and for once couldn’t seem to find more words.

**I AM NOT HUMAN, YOU KNOW THIS. BUT ONE OF THE THINGS MY KIND IS CAPABLE OF IS CONSUMING CONSCIOUSNESS AS WELL AS MATTER. HYDRA KNEW THAT TORTURE IS OFTEN AN INEFFECTIVE METHOD OF ACQUIRING INFORMATION, ESPECIALLY FROM A CLEVER MAN LIKE HOWARD, SO THEY DECIDED TO TAKE THE SOURCE. THERE IS A REASON NO BODY HAS EVER BEEN FOUND, AND NONE EVER WILL BE. BUT NOT EVERYTHING IS PERFECTLY ABSORBED THROUGH THE CONSUMPTION PROCESS. HYDRA DID NOT GET THE FORMULA FROM ME--BUT I DO KNOW THAT HOWARD’S FINAL THOUGHTS WERE OF YOU AND MARIA, AND HOW HE REGRETTED THE TIME HE SPENT ON THIS PROJECT RATHER THAN WITH YOU.**

That was when Tony broke, his posture crumpling. He pulled his hands away from Yob, cringing against the front door and staring at the wall in horror. Steve rose, ready this time to push past Yob and go to Tony, when Tony straightened back up, expression morphing into a vicious snarl as he squared his shoulders and pushed his face into Yob’s.

“And you just _did as you were ordered?_ Hydra told you to--what, _eat_ my father, and you just _went along_ with that?”

The expression on Yob’s face--or Bucky’s face with Yob in it--stayed even.

**I HAD NO CHOICE. SO YES.**

_“‘No choice’?”_ Tony shouted. “Look at you! I’ve just met you and I already know how powerful you have to be! You honestly expect me to believe a bunch of Nazi freaks could make something like _you_ bend over and do whatever they wanted?”

There seemed to be more limbs now than there had been a moment before, most of Bucky’s back and legs concealed behind them. Looking anywhere near them hurt, but Tony didn’t withdraw again.

**WHETHER YOU BELIEVE ME OR NOT IS UP TO YOU. BUT YOU DESERVED TO KNOW THE TRUTH, AND TO HEAR IT DIRECTLY FROM ME.**

An awful, brutal laugh escaped Tony, his eyes wild. “I deserved to be told by a goddamned _monster_ that it killed my mother and _ate_ my father? That’s what I deserved?”

**HYDRA HAS BEEN CRUEL TO BOTH OF US.**

At this, Yob turned around, beckoning to Steve, who rose obediently without any thought at all. When Yob pulled open a door in the wall and walked through it, drawing Steve after them, Steve went.

He found himself standing in a warm breeze, looking out over rolling golden-brown hills dotted with oak trees. When Steve turned to see where they’d come from, an expansive mansion sprawled behind them. They stood by a covered pool in a manicured yard, its green grass and lush bushes contrasting sharply with the dry, hot countryside around them.

Then the reality of the conversation with Tony caught up with Steve, and he pulled himself away from the thing in Bucky’s body.

 **YOU DESERVED TO HEAR IT FROM ME TOO,** that familiar mouth said in its utterly unfamiliar voice. **HOWARD WAS YOUR FRIEND.**

“You....Howard....” Steve stumbled over the words, mouth refusing to shape the sentence _You ate him._ It was simultaneously too ridiculous and too grotesque.

 **YES** , came the simple reply to the incomplete statement. **I DID.**

“Does he....did he....” Steve tried to marshall his thoughts, but his legs shook and didn’t want to hold him again in the face of the new reality in which he’d found himself. So he sank onto the hot tiles around the edge of the pool, pressing his palms to the baking surface. The tiles alternated in squares of white and deep blue, and Steve wondered what wealthy person owned this home. Was it one of Tony’s? Where was this?

“Is he still....alive in there somewhere?” Steve at last managed, afraid of the answer.

**HE DIED INSTANTLY WHEN I ABSORBED ALL HIS MATTER AND ENERGY. IT IS MERELY THAT MOST OF HIS KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE ARE MINE NOW.**

Steve swallowed, trying to take in that information. But he found he couldn’t, really--it felt like trying to fit a large round peg into a small square hole. His mind simply would not accept it so he just left it alone.

“Should we have left Tony like that?”

**HE NEEDS TO BE ANGRY. AND LEAVING HIM WITH NATALIA AND SAM MEANS HE CAN DISTRACT HIMSELF WITH OTHER THINGS HE FINDS MORE MANAGEABLE.**

To Steve’s surprise, Yob seated theirself cross-legged beside Steve on the tiles. Several limbs reached out, curling under the pool cover and into the water that presumably lay beneath. Steve wondered what that meant--did Yob need to keep their limbs wet to be comfortable, like other aquatic animals? Or was it a comfort thing, like the way Steve fiddled with pens and pencils and the seams of his kevlar suits? Steve tried to connect that concept to the towering things he’d seen in the river and his mind couldn’t handle it. Nor could he connect the fall of the helicarriers to the attempted gentleness and respect toward Tony. Steve had been forced to notify platoon members of the death of their friends, and it was never easy regardless of circumstances.

Steve didn’t want to think about this, either, so he changed the subject.

“I’ve been dreaming about you,” Steve murmured, softening in the heat of the sun here. “In my dreams, you’re....welcoming to me.” Solicitous was maybe a better word, but that conjured images of Bucky with the girls he’d used to date. All attention and compliments, smiles and dancing and good food, determined to show them a good time.

A wry smile came into Yob’s face at that, though, a look that recalled a hundred times Bucky had smiled that way at Steve when he said something Bucky thought stupidly endearing.

**THEY’RE NOT DREAMS, EXACTLY. BUCKY IS RIGHT, THOUGH, YOU ARE SWEET WHEN YOU’RE NOT ANGRY OR AFRAID. AND YOU’RE NOT AFRAID OF ME WHEN YOU THINK YOU’RE JUST DREAMING.**

“I--uh,” Steve stumbled, gripping and releasing his hands awkwardly in the face of that compliment from those awful bottomless eyes--and the confirmation of his fears about those ‘dreams’. “So if they’re not dreams, what are they?”

**THE ENDLESS OCEAN IS A PLACE HUMANS HAVE VISITED FOR AS LONG AS HUMANS HAVE DREAMED. MORTALS CANNOT BODILY COME TO MY REALM, THE PHYSICAL JOURNEY ACROSS THE WORLDS CANNOT BE SURVIVED BY ALL CREATURES AS IT CAN BY MY KIND. BUT IT IS EASY TO BRING YOU THERE ‘IN SPIRIT’.**

Seeing whatever was in Bucky’s body make air quotes with Bucky’s fingers was an experience, Steve had to admit, and it was more manageable to focus on that on the words.

Yob must have seen some of this in Steve’s face, though, because one of the limbs reached out cautiously to him, stopping near his face. Steve forced himself not to flinch away in disgust, and when he didn’t, it closed the distance and curled around his chin. The light still simultaneously seemed to illuminate its flesh while not touching it, and it still made Steve’s eyes ache to look at. But it was as soft as Steve remembered from his dreams of the Great One, and warm as human skin. The impulse to pull away lasted for several seconds as a tension in Steve’s neck, but then it ebbed and Steve relaxed.

 **BUCKY NEEDS YOU AND ME TO GET ALONG WITH EACH OTHER,** Yob said, their tone kind even as the words rolled through Steve’s spine and ribs, echoing through his bones. **WHAT WAS DONE TO HIM CANNOT BE REVERSED, SO HE AND I WILL BE TOGETHER UNTIL BUCKY DIES SOMEDAY. I KNOW THAT THIS IS HARD FOR YOU, SEEING HIM AND HIS BODY THIS WAY. BUT WE ARE BOTH GRATEFUL THAT YOU ARE TRYING.**

“It always used to just be him and me,” Steve admitted at last, the response walking out of his mouth on its own without his permission. He leaned into that indescribably silky touch, muscles along his spine releasing so the weight of his head was supported by Yob’s grip. “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. But he almost never needed me like I needed him, until the War--and then I failed him and let him fall, and now--”

But Yob grinned, and their huge laugh shrank into Bucky’s own human one, his eyes clearing into ordinary blue.

“Steve,” Bucky chided. “Are you _jealous_ of the elder god that Hydra summoned into me? Really?”

Steve’s face flushed hot, and he batted the strange limb away from his face at that, straightening up self-consciously. But Bucky didn’t allow it, laughing and grabbing Steve’s hands with those seemingly-endless extra limbs. Their grip was like steel.

“I’m not jealous!” Steve found himself half-shouting. He pulled at Bucky and it was exactly like being small again, during the times he’d been so angry and in so much pain that he’d tried to hit Bucky and Bucky had grabbed his wrists and kept him from hurting either of them. How Steve had hated him when he did that, hated Bucky for being bigger and stronger, hated himself for needing it--and he still hated it now. He couldn’t help but struggle because he was so mad.

“I thought you had _died_ , Bucky! I didn’t get to you in time and you died, and for three years I....” he couldn’t say _I wished I were still dead in the Atlantic._ “And this _creature_ saved you when I couldn’t--”

“No,” Bucky interrupted him. “You didn’t fail me, you self-righteous asshole! I _just fucking fell._ It was chance, it was war, these things happen! Not everything is about you.”

The fire went out of Steve at that, so when Bucky pulled him in so Steve’s forehead rested on Bucky’s shoulder, Steve went.

“When Hydra had me alone--before they summoned Yob Shoggoth--I didn’t blame _you_ ,” Bucky told him. “The hope that you’d rescue me again like you did in Azzano was all that kept me going. When I was frightened and alone, I pictured you.”

“But I didn’t rescue you,” Steve husked out, his eyes prickling even as he blinked hard to hold it in. God, what a week this had been. “I didn’t catch you, and then--I left you for dead. How did you even--from that height--”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve got guilt and shame because you think you alone are responsible for everything in the goddamn world, this isn’t news. Just admit you’re jealous that there’s someone else in my life now. You always used to be antsy about me sleeping around.”

“Fuck you,” came the automatic response, as natural as breathing. And at this familiarity, the tears really came.

Three years of grief--three years of being alone in the world and having to try to replace Bucky and the Commandos with the Avengers, three years of watching Peggy decline, three years of a wonderful and awful new world that he’d thought Bucky would never get to see--poured in at once. Steve didn’t want to cry, it was grossly unfair to Bucky to have to deal with this on top of everything he’d already suffered, but Steve simply couldn’t control it. He’d controlled it for three years, he’d controlled it for the last two days, and he’d reached his limit. The muscles of his belly rippled as he tried to hold his breath, to keep the noises in at least, and water dripped off his jaw and onto the limbs between and around them.

“After Tony leaves,” Bucky murmured, his breath warm and smelling of the sea against Steve’s temple, “You can drive us to New York and I’ll sleep in the car. I know Brooklyn’s different now, but I want to go home.”

“Yes,” Steve gasped. “Yes, God, please.”

Bucky turned Steve’s face up, metal fingers under Steve’s chin this time. Steve had just time to look into Bucky’s human eyes before Bucky moved their faces closer together. For a split second Steve thought he’d be kissed again at last, and he anticipated the touch of those lips and the prickle of that stubble. But instead Bucky’s tongue curled around the bottom of Steve’s chin before running up his cheek to his eye, collecting the tears. The tip of his tongue tickled against Steve’s eyelashes.

“What the fuck,” Steve bit out, even as he didn’t pull away. Bucky went still in the middle of bending toward the second side of Steve’s face. For a long awkward moment they just sat there, faces close.

“Uh. Shit, sorry. Just autopilot. We’re kinda, um. Kinda weird about saltwater I guess.”

“What the fuck.”

Somehow that made Bucky bridle, pulling back and wrinkling up his nose.

“As if _this_ is the weirdest thing I’ve done lately!”

At that, Steve couldn’t help but laugh. After a moment they laughed together, and then Bucky turned toward the mansion.

“Yob says Tony just left the house, so we should go back now if we want to say goodbye to Sam and Natasha.”

**

Steve said his farewells, and Natasha spoke privately with Yob before leaving as well. Tony took two of the three cars he’d brought, driving away with Sam and Natasha and leaving the third car for Steve and Bucky, which Steve thought was pretty generous of him all things considered. Tony hadn’t wanted to even look at Bucky again, which was understandable.

After Steve had given Tony’s party an hour to get ahead on the road, Steve and Bucky locked up Sam’s house and left for New York as well.

The bright daytime sun glittered in Bucky’s stubble as he lay asleep in the passenger seat. It brought out streaks of gold in his hair and reflected sharp into Steve’s eyes from the metal arm. It was like looking into a dream in the waking world, and Steve still half expected himself to wake up in his apartment in D.C., blink at the ceiling, cry, and then go on another thirty-mile run just to get away from the desperate loneliness of his life.

But instead Bucky snorted in something like half a sneeze, metal fingers twitching as he dreamed.

As he drove, Steve thought about how the crime scene cleaners and repair people had finished with his D.C. apartment within a few days. Nobody wanted there to be lingering evidence of the fact that the Director of one of the world’s greatest intelligence agencies had been shot by an assassin in Captain America’s place.

Natasha had acquired a bugsweeper for Steve, and told him to make liberal use of it tonight in Brooklyn. “Yes, Steve, they listened to you jerk off and cry and talk to yourself and sing along to embarrassing songs and whatever else you did while you thought you were alone,” was what she had said, and then had flicked his ear for being naive. “You honestly didn’t think they bugged the living space of one of their best assets? Who even trained you, it’s like you’re a child.”

Steve figured that said a lot more about both Natasha and SHIELD than it did about him. But he took the bugsweeper, and when he parked Tony’s car outside his place and woke Bucky up with a gentle hand on the metal shoulder, he let Bucky take the sweeper out of his hands to use it.

Bucky made quick work of the listening (and viewing, that was another unpleasant awakening) devices in Steve’s apartment. On the bright side, Pepper had texted him earlier to let him know that groceries had been ordered and the Brooklyn apartment cleaned before their arrival, so while Bucky took care of security, Steve unpacked the food and laid out a belated lunch. When he’d finished and Bucky was still digging bugs out of crevices with a large knife he’d produced from somewhere mysterious on his person, Steve stood in the living room and looked at the windows and walls. They were in a different state now, and the layout of the two places were dissimilar, but Steve couldn’t help thinking of his other apartment where Fury had died.

Bucky came up behind him and looked at the wall too, probably puzzled by why they were staring at nothing.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Why did Hydra want Director Fury dead?”

Bucky sighed. “Because of the Insight helicarriers, of course. It would be hard to disguise the existence of a secret Nazi organization if your governmental superweapons turn on hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens. Fury may have been in favor of Project Insight, but even he would have protested that.”

“Do you remember....” Steve started to ask, then stoppered up the words. But Bucky just let out a thoughtful hum behind him.

“Do I remember shooting him?”

Steve nodded, a brief jerk of his head up and down. “Yes, sort of. Yob did most of the wetwork. They let me be aware of this hit because I had no personal attachment to the target. But usually when Hydra sent us out, I’d just be....elsewhere, wherever I go when Yob takes the body. Yob would only let me remember what they did once we’d returned to base for debriefing, when it was already over.”

A noise escaped Steve at this, some sound of horror or disgust. He didn’t know what, he couldn’t even tell what he was feeling, but Bucky sighed.

“It was an arrangement we came to after the first few assassinations. It really fucked me up, the way Hydra’s commands puppeted us. We’d be able to make choices about _how_ we did what they wanted, but we couldn’t not do it. And Yob....Yob just takes a larger view of things. At first we fought about it, because I figured if my body was killing people I should at least do those poor bastards the honor of being there for it. Guess you rubbed off on me, all those years of martyring yourself reading every grim bit of news you could get your hands on. But after a while I gave up on that and just let Yob lead, because living through the hits was fucking me up so bad. Yob told me Hydra was already making victims out of our targets, and I didn’t need to make myself another by taking on more bad memories than I already had.”

Steve closed his eyes, as if this would shut out Bucky’s words somehow, or any of the ways they were and always had been different. As if Steve’s eyelids could keep him from seeing the truth of what Steve had allowed to happen. ‘ _More bad memories than I already had.’_ Was Bucky thinking of the War itself, in which he had stayed because Steve had told him it was the right thing to do, or was Bucky thinking of the time when Hydra had him again before the summoning, when he’d been hoping Steve would save him and instead Steve left him behind?

“How did you survive the fall?” Steve asked, quiet in the early afternoon sun striping the floor through the blinds.

But Bucky didn’t answer, pulling away and leaving an empty space at Steve’s side. Several limbs slipped into existence around him, just visible out of the corner of Steve’s eye.

“Let’s eat,” was all Bucky said.


	4. From Within the Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artwork for this fic appears partway through this chapter! :D

For another three days, Bucky continued to spend most of his time asleep, Steve spent most of his time with him, reading information from the Hydra data-dump, and they avoided any serious topic of conversation. Instead, during his waking moments Bucky commandeered the use of Steve’s computer to look up what seemed like a completely random assortment of information. The plot summary of a television show from the eighties, YouTube recordings of a series of popular songs from the sixties, a selection of recipes, brands of deodorant and cologne, car makes and models. Steve didn’t know what any of it meant. And Bucky showered for around an hour at a time.

Steve made the mistake of walking in on this by accident once. The shower stall was filled to the brim with colorful-dark limbs, packed up against the glass and curling over the top of it as well. The pressurized water hissed as it hit all those surfaces, trickles of it just visible around the writhing bulk. The pipes moaned, humming like echoes of Yob’s voice.

Recoiling from the sight and hastily closing the door after himself, Bucky’s call of “Knock next time, punk,” mocked Steve from the midst of....whatever was going on in the bathroom. He went and stood in the kitchen by himself, hyperventilating as he tried to convince himself not to feel jealous or disgusted and failed.

What had he even walked in on? Was it just some sort of required maintenance of the limbs’ skin-quality to keep them wet for a while? Was it a simple enjoyment of nice things, the same way Steve himself might luxuriate in a long bath? Was it a bizarre form of cross-dimensional masturbation? Or was Bucky having _sex_ with the thing Hydra had summoned?

Every night, Steve dreamed of the endless ocean and the great being there. In the dreams he never felt confused or overwhelmed--he knew he was at no risk, and it felt so good to relax into the weight of the water and the sweet attention of something that loved him.

On day four, Bucky got out of bed at three in the morning and began to dress in his armor, and worried by this, Steve rose with him, shaking off the memory of curling up at the base of one massive eye, cradled on soft skin. But when he got a look at his bedmate’s face, it was Yob inside it.

**WE HAVE SOMETHING WE MUST DO. YOU CAN COME WITH US OR NOT, AS YOU WISH.**

“What is it?” Steve asked, already getting his own under-armor shirt and leggings on.

**ZOLA KEPT A NOTEBOOK IN WHICH HE DESCRIBED HOW HE SUMMONED ME AND OTHER LESSER ENTITIES. IT COULD BE USED TO SUMMON ANOTHER. HE HID IT BEFORE HIS UN-DEATH, EVEN FROM HYDRA, BECAUSE HE WAS AFRAID OF ME AND MY KIND. BUT A HYDRA OPERATIVE USED ME TO LOCATE IT, AND HE KEPT IT. A HYDRA TEAM IS ABOUT TO FIND IT.**

Gooseflesh crawled up over Steve’s body, but he merely nodded. Then he knelt in his closet to open up his gun safe, and remembering Bucky’s words about being stored in a pocket dimension, shivered again.

**YOU WILL NOT NEED YOUR GUNS, I WILL BE THERE. BUT BRING YOUR SHIELD, THERE MAY BE STRAY BULLETS.**

Steve thought of the news reporting rooms full of wrecked bodies, and tried not to feel afraid. He failed. Even with the limbs Steve’s eyes still didn’t quite want to see, it was disturbingly easy to forget what the thing in Bucky really was, especially after quiet days spent together in a familiar space. Was that something Yob was doing on purpose, making Steve forget? Or was it simply the human desire to believe that things were fine when they weren’t?

Feeling a little ridiculous, Steve stood fully dressed in his combat suit in his own living room. Before two weeks ago, he’d always made sure to undress and shower at the Triskelion before coming home. Before two weeks ago, his home hadn’t been a place where he’d expected threats. It felt very naive, now.

Yob took Steve’s hand and looked into his face. **READY YOURSELF. WE WILL BE WALKING INTO A TEAM OF ARMED MEN. THIS IS NOT AN NORMAL OP WHERE THERE IS TRANSPORT TO THE SITE AND TIME TO OBSERVE THE SCENE.**

Nodding, Steve brought his shield to his arm and fell into a fighting stance. Then Yob pulled open a door on a blank stretch of wall, and they walked from Steve’s dark apartment into a prosaic suburban neighborhood, still in the dark of the hours before dawn. Given the similar time of day, Steve guessed they were probably still in the States.

It was his last thought before Yob pulled a silenced pistol and shot four people Steve hadn’t even had time to see. Even silenced, the shots and the falling of the bodies made enough noise to alert more agents, because six more poured out of the house whose driveway they stood in.

Steve crouched down behind a car, watching in a kind of horrified fascination by the light of the sodium lamps as Yob’s limbs absorbed bullets without flinching, then reached out and simply took the guns away from their bearers, once even tearing the trigger finger away with the gun. These guns were silenced too, so when Yob fired them on their owners it made only minimal sound. No more than thirty seconds passed between the emergence of the operatives and their deaths.

The barely-human figured marched into the house’s front door with Steve following at a distance, listening to thuds and yelps as Yob killed whoever was still in the house. When silence fell and Steve came in, a man in civilian clothes lay dead among the combat operatives. Or rather, what was left of a man in civilian clothes; the others had merely been shot, but this man’s head had been torn off.

“Was he Hydra?” Steve asked, voice low as he stared into the lifeless eyes and the massive pool of blood. The torso was still bleeding out, sluggish now the heart was no longer beating and the greatest part of the blood pressure had been released.

**OH YES. HE IS THE ONE WHO SENT ME TO KILL TONY’S PARENTS, IN FACT. WILL TONY WANT PHOTOS OF THE BODY? I DIDN’T BRING A PHONE.**

The immediate response was shock at the grotesque offer--of course Tony would not want photos of a brutally decapitated corpse. But then Steve paused, actually taking in Yob’s words: this bland-looking white man living in a dull little house had had ordered an otherworldly entity to _eat_ Howard Stark just to get at the supersoldier formula. And Tony had a real vicious streak sometimes. He hid it well for the most part, but over the course of the three years they’d known each other, seeing the way Tony was still hunting down remnants of the Ten Rings and still damaged from both Howard’s actions while alive and his untimely death, Steve wondered if Yob’s question was more thoughtful than transgressive.

But Steve gave no answer, and instead watched as Yob began to punch a wall with the metal arm. One blow, two, three, and the wall crumbled, revealing a hidden space beyond. Even in the mimimal light of the street lamps filtering in through the blinds, Yob reached in with confidence, pulling out a box. Steve fumbled toward the wall to flick on a light, then winced at the sudden brightness. He came up to Yob’s side as they dumped the box’s contents onto the kitchen table. The box was sea-blue and bore a black stencil of the Hydra symbol.

Among dossiers, booklets, maps, and other papers lay a notebook with a red leather cover, the front of it stamped with a black star. The inverse of the red one on Bucky’s metal shoulder.

**TURN AWAY. YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS.**

“I think I can handle whatever’s written in--”

**NO, I AM GOING TO EAT IT. YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE THIS.**

Steve turned away and he closed his eyes. He heard a strange sound, as of something large and sticky moving, and the passage of air through a very large space. Then Bucky’s warm human hand squeezed Steve’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Bucky told him. “Seriously though, did you bring a phone?”

Neither of them had, so Bucky stole one out of the pocket of an operative and used its emergency dialer to call 911 before handing the phone to Steve.

“Report the incident. The neighbors shouldn’t wake up to see the corpses. There are children here.” Then he gave Steve an address in Cleveland.

Nodding, Steve reported it to the police. They were gone again as soon as the call ended.

**

“Is there anything else like that I should know about? Any other loose ends you’re going to have to tie up?” Steve bit out, unzipping his combat suit with angry vigor. But Bucky only sighed, setting down the boxes of files they had taken from the secret room.

“Yes, probably.”

“And you can’t fucking tell me any of this in advance? You’ve gotta wake me up at ass-o-clock in the morning to teleport me around the country instead?”

At this, Bucky turned his blue eyes on Steve, expression miserable. For a half second Steve felt guilty, but then he planted his hands on his hips and glared black.

“I usually don’t know until Yob tells me. I’m missing a lot of the last seventy years, Steve--and there’s so much I don’t _want_ to know. Yob tells us what’s necessary, isn’t that enough?”

Nostrils flaring, Steve pulled a hard breath through his nose.

“So I’m just supposed to trust them, knowing nothing about what they are or what they want except for the fact that they wear your fucking body like a suit of clothes? If this thing is so powerful, why haven’t we been planning to take out all of Hydra? Why only the cells that you destroyed? Why only this group today?”

Bucky looked away, and what looked back a moment later wasn’t him.

**I HAVE BEEN CLOSE TO YOUR SPECIES FOR A LONG TIME. THERE IS A REASON I WAS THE ONE CAUGHT BY THE SUMMONING RATHER THAN ANOTHER. BEFORE HYDRA TRAPPED ME, I STUDIED YOUR KIND. I WAS WHAT YOU MIGHT THINK OF AS A NATURALIST, OR AN ANTHROPOLOGIST.**

Steve felt his heart rate kick into a higher gear, blood rushing to his face as he flushed angry-hot.

“So if you’ve--what, watched us like we’re bugs on a sidewalk? Watched us suffer and die for your amusement? Why didn’t you _help?_ Why didn’t you _fix_ any of the awful things going on here? You could have stopped Hitler, you could have--”

 **DO YOU ‘FIX’ A LION BY KILLING IT JUST BECAUSE IT EATS A GAZELLE?** Bucky’s face with Yob inside it stayed soft, his hands open at his sides. A few small limbs crept around from behind him. **IT IS BRUTAL, BUT IT IS WHAT THE ANIMALS OF YOUR WORLD DO. HUMANS ARE PREDATORS AND THEY ARE ALSO PREY. YOU HAVE FREE WILL AND MUST BE ALLOWED TO REMAIN THAT WAY. TO INTERFERE AS IF I WERE A GOD IN MORE THAN NAME WOULD BE MONSTROUS, AND YOU DO NOT TRULY WANT THE RULE OF SOMETHING LIKE ME, SOMETHING YOU CANNOT FIGHT--OR UNDERSTAND.**

Steve opened his mouth to shout but then closed it again and bit his tongue till it hurt, and bit it harder still till it bled, and dug his fingernails into his palms. The rationality of those words galled him, holding up to him a mirror in whose reflection he didn’t wish to see himself. He thought of the long stretch of human history, millennia of pointless violence and death, and of beings watching all of it and doing nothing. Then he imagined a world in which they _had_ done something, and he turned away, breathing hard.

“So why kill anyone at all, after you were freed? And why make it so goddamned _messy?”_

**BECAUSE THEY KNEW WHAT WAS DONE TO BUCKY AND MYSELF. THAT KNOWLEDGE CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO PROPAGATE.**

“And what about _me_?” Steve shouted, whipping back again and striding close to stare into those fathomless yellow eyes that were nothing like his childhood friend. “ _I_ know what was done to you, will you kill me too? How about Natasha, Sam, and Tony?”

Yob smiled with Bucky’s soft mouth and Bucky’s fine teeth, and let out a bitter laugh that reverberated in Steve’s ribcage and buzzed in the airy spaces of his skull.

 **YES, WHAT** **_ABOUT_ ** **YOU, STEVE? IF YOU HAD BEEN FORCED TO WATCH YOUR BELOVED BE TORTURED AS I HAVE, IF YOUR BODY HAD BEEN MANIPULATED AND FORCED TO COMMIT ATROCITIES, WOULD YOU HAVE LEFT ANY OF THE ONES WHO HAD DONE IT ALIVE?**

Steve gritted his teeth, and then spun and punched the wall once, twice, and again and again until his knuckles bled and his miserable helplessness and rage turned into self-recrimination.

“No,” he growled, focusing himself on the ache of his bones and the burning of his broken skin. “No. I would have hunted them down and killed them all with great prejudice. I would have _died_ to end them, and--and Bucky would have too.”

Yob nodded. **I WAS AN OBSERVER ONCE, AND NOW I AM INVOLVED. I CANNOT EVER BE AS IMPARTIAL AS BEFORE. BUT NOR SHOULD I MAKE MYSELF A VENGEFUL GOD JUST BECAUSE HUMANS HAVE CREATED INJUSTICE. YOU CAN DO THAT ON YOUR OWN.**

At this Steve sank to the floor, digging his fingers into his face and trying to hold back the screaming and the tears that wanted to come out. The world was too big, with too much in it he either understood when he wished he didn’t or couldn’t comprehend while desperately needing to. His chest ached as he thought of the church he had attended with his mother when he’d been young, and the faith he’d had in God and angels and their righteous will watching over him. That belief had died somewhere along the way--perhaps with his mother in the sanitarium, or in Italy on the table in Zola’s lab, or in the death camps with all of the souls there.

Once, perhaps even Steve himself would have been seen as a god. Strong, tall, with a body that healed wounds inhumanly fast. Erskine’s serum had always been a kind of miracle, hadn’t it? And yet it still could not prevent this. Any of this.

Steve felt as though he were coming apart at the seams.

Bucky or whatever was inside him sat down at Steve’s side, but Steve shook off the hand placed onto his shoulder. After a moment of silence, a human sigh gusted warm briny breath over Steve’s shoulder, and then the other body got up again and walked away. Steve listened to the sounds of leather armor being removed and hung on a hanger in Steve’s own closet, boots being unlaced and moved around, then covers drawn back. Silence fell, aside from the faint noises of pipes running in the walls, the man downstairs who worked night shift and was just getting home from his job as a school janitor, and the faint rush of human breathing from the bedroom.

Eventually, heartbeat normal and face dry once more, Steve went into the main bedroom himself, undressing from his own armor. When he was bare except for his briefs, Steve slipped into the bed beside Bucky. It was like so many of the hundreds of the times they’d shared a sleeping space during and before the War, except for the glimmer of moonlight and street lamps on the metal arm before it vanished again below the blankets. Bucky couldn’t sleep on his left side anymore, because of the arm.

Tentative and unsure of his reception, Steve scooted himself closer to the familiar body in small increments, then pressed close when metal fingers found his arm and pulled him in. He let out a shaky sigh against Bucky’s nape, the smooth skin and curling wisps of hair there. Bucky kept his long hair swept up over the top of the pillow, out of his face. It looked ridiculous, and Steve had already teased him for it, but it meant Bucky’s neck was bare and waiting for Steve to bury his face there.

They still hadn’t kissed or touched or done anything more than what they might have done as children, spending the night together on the couch cushions in Bucky’s parents’ house. Just held each other as Bucky slept and slept and slept, and Steve dreamed of something who cradled his whole huge body like a tiny, precious thing.

**

Waking came slowly, in fragments of awareness. First came the low rasp of Bucky’s snore. Then came brief curiosity at how long they had till whoever was on watch tonight woke them for the day’s march. Then came the realization that their bedroll was too soft for them to still be anywhere afield. Then came briefly-opened eyes, flinching from the bright morning sun through the thin curtains, and the recognition of Steve’s own apartment in Brooklyn, the one Tony had bought him just after the Battle of New York when real estate had been cheap from all the Chitauri damage and Tony had been desperately trying to collect their weird little family into one place. Steve had refused to move into the Avengers Tower out of grief: it had been too soon to join another family like the Howling Commandos.

Then several somethings squirmed over Steve’s waist and thighs, and he realized he lay in a kind of nest of limbs, warm and sticky from his own sweat, with his barely-clothed morning erection pressed against the skin of Bucky’s hip. Steve pursed his lips, silently berating his body for pulling this bullshit on him yet again, just as it had the last few mornings.

He made to pull away, but the limbs wrapped tighter around him, pulling him even closer up against Bucky’s side. So instead Steve pushed himself up on one elbow, searching the familiar face to see who, exactly, was making this invitation.

Bucky’s blues smiled shyly up at him, and in the daytime glow of sunlight on their sheets, Steve remembered nothing but the longing of three years alone, in which every possible lover’s face had been compared to this one. Steve had turned down every blind date Natasha had tried to set him up on, and he was grateful for that, now. The inches between their faces were so short, and Bucky’s fingers stroked sweetly against the prickly skin under Steve’s unshaven chin. It seemed natural to bend and touch Bucky’s smile with Steve’s own.

One kiss slid into two, and it was easy to make himself not think of exactly how many arms wrapped around him and held him against Bucky’s ribs as they rose and fell with his gasping breaths. When Steve at last pulled his mouth away to bite at Bucky’s neck and jaw, the groan this earned Steve was painfully familiar, a groan he had earned hundreds of times before the War. Shifting his weight onto his left elbow, Steve sucked at Bucky’s neck and pushed two fingers into Bucky’s warm, wet mouth. Bucky had always loved having his mouth played with, and the silken heat of his tongue squirmed against Steve’s fingertips, lips tightening as his teeth scraped Steve’s knuckles.

But then a metal arm grabbed Steve by the shoulder, pushing him up and away, and Bucky turned his head to spit out the fingers. Surprised, Steve blinked, and it wasn’t Bucky anymore in the body below his. Steve glared, angry at the interruption, and inhaled to give Yob a piece of his mind.

**NOT IN THE MOUTH--NOT ANYMORE.**

“I didn’t fucking invite you, I don’t care what your opinion of it is.”

This earned Steve a deeply unimpressed look, and Yob rolled their eyes.

**YOU THINK YOU HAVE BEEN THE ONLY THING IN HIS MOUTH IN THE LAST SEVEN DECADES? I TOLD HIM HE SHOULD HAVE TALKED TO YOU ABOUT THIS.**

Steve’s irritation froze up brittle and hard, and Steve felt now as though any touch or breath would shatter him.

“What....what do you mean?”

Yob’s expression eased, golden eyes studying Steve’s face. Then they held up one metal finger, silently asking for a moment. Steve pulled away, slinging his legs over the side of the bed and wiggling his toes into the carpet. He gripped the side of the mattress, digging his nails into its seams. Behind him, Bucky’s body breathed carefully, long slow breaths like someone trying to remain calm.

“Sorry, Steve,” Bucky said at last, and let out a sad little laugh. The mattress bounced as Bucky sat up too. “Bit off more than I could chew, there.”

“What was Yob implying?” Steve asked, twisting to look at his friend. At least ten limbs were wrapped tight around Bucky’s shoulders, and he kept his face turned away. “What is it we should have talked about?”

Bucky’s head dropped, hair falling over his shoulders in a curling mess.

“You asked how I survived the fall,” Bucky murmured. “I didn’t, in the end. Hydra found me dying, knew exactly where I was, and knew I was one of Zola’s projects. I hadn’t been in the ravine more than a day when they came for me. Was Zola ever even on that fucking train?”

Steve’s chest locked up like one of his childhood asthma attacks. Only his magical new physiology allowed him to hold his breath this long, because he couldn’t bear to even move enough to draw air. After a pause he finally shook his head, because their intel had been wrong--Zola had been somewhere else, rendering Bucky’s loss even worse by making it pointless.

Bucky must have felt the head-shake from the movement of the bed, because he went on.

“Well I reached Zola in the end, because he found me. He watched me die--because of the serum, it took days, my damn body trying so fucking hard to survive. Severed spine, broken ribs, shattered jaw, punctured lung, fractured skull, my left arm ripped off at the elbow. Only the icy ground kept me from bleeding out right away. That, and whatever Zola did to me in Azzano. I wasn’t the one meant for this, originally--Zola was just testing his own version of supersoldier serums. A side project, to kill time around his main one, which was his research on summoning.” Bucky laughed, a bitter, awful noise devoid of humor. “They hooked me up to IV fluids and stuck a tube down my throat to make sure I got enough oxygen so I wouldn’t die too fast. It gave them time to create the space they needed and make the sigils.”

Steve started shivering. He’d never felt more helpless. “And then?” he prompted, not wanting an answer.

“Then I died, Steve. I guess there’s a brief time after a death when the consciousness leaves the body empty, and in that moment you can pull something else in there, make a dead body a portal to somewhere else. Nature abhors a vacuum, Zola used to say, so they used my dead body like a trap and they caught Yob Shoggoth.”

“But--” Steve protested, voice thin and breaking as he scrabbled to avoid what he was hearing. Was the thing he’d been kissing just a warm corpse after all? All he could remember was the snap of the bolt and the way Bucky had twisted in the air as he fell. Steve found a fixed spot on the wall just above the bedside lamp and stared at it instead. “But Yob said--they said you weren’t--”

“I _was_ dead. Now I’m not. I don’t understand the specifics, but they made my body a portal--permanently. I’m a door that can’t close. I guess I came back in too by accident, just because the way stayed open. Zola was unhappy to discover I was in there too.”

The room turned around Steve, a vertiginous twisting, and he finally allowed himself a raw gasp of air. “Well after all that, no wonder you don’t like stuff in your mouth anymore,” he croaked.

Bucky stood up, the bed jolting as he left it. Steve’s head rotated, inevitably drawn to the movement, desperate to see the living features again. But Yob Shoggoth knelt down in front of him, and took both of Steve’s hands in their own.

 **HE IS NOT DEAD NOW,** they said, their voice a gentle stirring of the world around Steve. **AND NEITHER ARE YOU.**

“He’s still in there, right?” Steve pleaded. He’d listened to Bucky’s heartbeat so often in the last few days, surely that meant something?

 **YES,** Yob Shoggoth replied. **BUT WHEN HE GETS OVERWHELMED, HE LEAVES. HE’LL BE BACK SOON.**

“I guess I’d better--” Steve sniffled, frightened of having those eyes like holes in the world looking at him so tenderly. He pulled his hands away and rose, trying to get away from that gaze. “Better make us breakfast then. Get us fed. We eat a lot.”

He stumbled his way into the kitchen. By the time he had eggs and sausage and toast made, his panic had ebbed and Bucky sat down at the table to join him, fully human and bashful.

“Guess I ruined the moment, huh?”

With a wan smile, Steve sliced up oranges and finished assembling a plate for Bucky, bending to kiss his soft hair as Steve set the breakfast on the table. Steve was coming to like Bucky’s hair long, even if he disliked the prickly growth of beard--men hadn’t been allowed to wear their hair like this in the forties, and it was a look Steve admired on guys these days even if he wasn’t brave enough for it himself.

“There’ll be other moments, right?” Steve replied, and sat down with his own meal. Bucky’s metal fingers were graceful around his knife as he cut his food, and his smile suggested that he hoped there would be plenty of moments.

**

Later that day, Steve got a text from Sam.

_ >>Is now a good moment to call you? I got something on my mind. Nothing serious, don’t worry, this is just something about my personal life. Friends level stuff, not fate of the world Avengers stuff. _

Steve smiled at his phone, fond of this excellent man he’d just happened to find while running. He hit the green call button, and it only rang once before Sam picked up.

“Steve, uh. Hey. Can I ask you a question that is maybe too personal? I normally wouldn’t rush our friendship like this, but I’m not sure who else to go to with this.”

Concern tensed up Steve’s chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. Things are great actually; I have wings again and I’ve been hunting Nazis all week, so I’m living the dream. And, uh. I think maybe Natasha and I are dating or something? Twice now after the team has destroyed a base, she’s twice now taken me out to breakfast alone.”

For a long, stunned moment, Steve stared at his own wall, and then he let out a startled bark of laughter and covered his face with his free hand.

“I hate to admit this, but Natasha herself would tell you I am maybe one of the worst people to ask for advice about women.”

Sam laughed in return, easy and open, and Steve relaxed again.

“Yeah, it’s not advice about women I need, though. I’m fine with women. It’s, um--” he coughed. “Look, with you and Barnes. Does he....not to be crass, but does he stay human the whole time when you’re intimate?”

The question left Steve staring at the wall again, this time hot-faced and self-conscious. “Why do you ask?”

A long silence followed, before finally Sam seemed to break. “Because Natasha didn’t when we hooked up last night, and it’s....look, I _gotta_ brag about this to somebody who understands.”

Steve burst into giggles. “Sam, oh my god. Are you sure she’d want you talking about her this way?” he whispered helplessly, but he didn’t really mean it. Truthfully he wanted to know the juicy details, and the idea of it took him right back to the good parts of his days selling war bonds. He’d spent happy hours listening to raunchy stories the girls told of their romantic and sexual encounters while they did their makeup and his, back when he’d been so new to his strength that he’d worried about hurting himself with his eyeliner pencil.

“I’m only gonna say good things, believe me. Because I damn near _passed out._ And when I put myself back together I felt like there should have been a choir of angels at the bedside singing her praises. I haven’t been a virgin in almost twenty years and yet I still feel like I got the deflowering of my life. It’s just lucky Tony has all this soundproofing in his walls is all I’m saying.”

“Oh my god,” Steve snickered. He let Sam talk himself out, because it was nice to hear his new friend so enthusiastic--and nicer still to think that Natasha had found someone really trustworthy to be with. Sam seemed stable, even given how quick he’d jumped back into the fight. And he wouldn’t want Natasha to be anything but happy.

When Steve finally hung up the phone, he looked up to see that Bucky had crept into the room at some point, leaning against the wall by the doorway. For a second, all Steve could think about was what Sam had said, his delighted effusiveness about Natasha and her additions, and Steve's thoughts filled with images of the sex they could be having. But then Steve's mind stumbled, thinking of the Avengers fighting Hydra without him.

“Not today, but at some point I want to join the others, to fight,” Steve said, as gently as he could. Steve expected some resistance or possibly distress--Bucky had well-nigh been glued to him since arrival, except those weirdly long showers he took. But Bucky just nodded.

“For the first time in my life, I don’t have to tell you to be safe and just hope for the best. I know you’ll be safe, because if you get into trouble, Yob will know and we’ll go to you.”

Steve bridled at this, opening his mouth to say he didn’t need a supernatural nursemaid to watch over him, when Bucky’ slapped one of his limbs down over Steve’s mouth. Steve flushed at the feel of the incredibly soft skin against his lips, but his eyebrows came down in anger too.

“Shut the fuck up, Steve,” Bucky shook his head. “You and I have had this argument about a thousand times. We don’t need to have it again because we both know how it ends: you storm off, and you either save the day, come back a bloody mess, or I wade in and save you.”

Once, that would have set Steve off worse. But Steve wasn’t eighteen anymore and Bucky being dead still felt too recent. So instead Steve relaxed, staring hungrily at Bucky: because this proved yet again that it was really _Bucky_ in there under the familiar face, not a trick or illusion or someone else. Who else could have Steve read like this?

Something of Steve’s thoughts must have come through his expression, because Bucky gave him a mischievous smile and the limb on Steve’s face loosened, its touch instead stroking light down his throat. Steve shivered, feeling color prickle down his neck and chest and his nipples tighten up as though to meet the oncoming blush. Crossing the room, Bucky seated himself on the couch. And when more limbs stretched up to bring Steve down to Bucky’s lap, Steve went, straddling those thick thighs and bending down for a kiss.

After a moment, though, Steve pulled back, breathing hard. He nodded his head at the limbs surrounding them now. “Can you put those away and tell Yob to leave us for a while? I’d like to feel like it’s just you and me.”

Bucky’s face, which had been open and relaxed, shuttered.

“You can’t have me back the way I was. I didn’t get the choose the way I survived. So you either deal with me the way I am, or we don’t do this.”

For a second a flash of anger filled Steve, but then he forced it down and leaned back on his haunches, keeping his hands wrapped around both Bucky’s shoulders, the metal and the flesh. He made himself remember how scared _he’d_ been that Bucky wouldn’t want his new body, bigger than Bucky’s and so different from the one Bucky had spent so much time learning how to touch.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Okay. But I thought all those things meant Yob was....nearby or something. This is kind of a private moment.”

Bucky’s blue eyes met Steve’s, his mouth pinched into a pale line.

“You still don’t get it? You can’t have me without Yob. They’re always going to be here. They feel what I feel and see what I see.”

“But I thought--” Steve began, feeling wrongfooted and confused and angry all at the same time. He took a deep breath to try to calm himself. It didn’t help. “But you both made it sound like there were times you’re separate--like during the assassinations.” _Smooth move maintaining the mood, Rogers,_ Steve thought as soon as he’d said it, _bringing up all the people he was forced to kill. Yikes._

But Bucky just rolled his eyes. “Yes, Yob can keep _me_ from feeling or seeing what the body does. But I can’t do it the other way. I’m only human, and they’re one of the Great Ones.”

Chewing on his own lip to keep himself from saying something stupid that’d upset Bucky worse, Steve willed his erection away and tried to focus. The limbs that had still been wrapped around his thighs and back pulled away too--and that didn’t seem like a good sign, now.

“Can I talk to Yob for a minute?” he asked.

Bucky rolled his eyes at this too. “They’ll just say the same thing as me,” he replied, but then it was Yob inside the face.

**YES?**

“You said....you called Bucky your ‘beloved,’ once,” Steve mumbled, feeling very awkward now, face burning-hot. He pulled his hands back, crossing them over his chest, but was keenly aware of the fact that he was still seated on this being’s lap. “And it sorta seems like--well, like you’ve been trying to court me, in your own way. Showing me where you live, and being very--uh, _nice_ to me.”

The smile this earned Steve was one Steve must have seen a hundred times, directed at both himself and pretty girls and some of the other fairies they’d known. He’d never seen it with glowing golden eyes that were also endless portals into somewhere deep and dark, but the look was still familiar enough.

 **YES,** Yob answered, in a tone that seemed to suggest that Steve go on.

“Well I--look, I’m only human. We can’t be of any real interest. We’re like ants to you.”

Those terrible eyes studied Steve’s face, but the smile only softened.

**WHILE I AM IN THIS HUMAN BODY, I FEEL WHAT IT FEELS. AND WHILE I AM JOINED TO BUCKY’S MIND, I CAN WANT WHAT HE WANTS. BEFORE THIS, I WOULD NOT HAVE WANTED, AND WHEN I SOMEDAY LEAVE, I WILL NOT WANT IT AGAIN. BUT IT IS AN EXPERIENCE WORTH HAVING WHILE I AM HERE, AND BUCKY WANTS IT VERY MUCH.**

“But what about--” Steve cut off. He didn’t know how to say this. He was still afraid of this ‘Great One,’ still remembered the fall of the helicarriers. For all that it was currently contained in a mostly-familiar body, Steve knew the power he was close to and what it could do. But he was also afraid of sounding just plain stupid.

“What about _me_?” he asked after a pause, resigning himself to looking like a self-conscious fool. “Do you want _me_? I don’t want to....share myself, with someone who’s just playing along.”

The smile faded at last, but was replaced by a gentle expression, and Yob lifted both hands and a few limbs to cup Steve’s waist, stroking the thumbs back and forth.

 **I FEEL WHAT HE FEELS,** they repeated. **THAT MEANS I FEEL HIS LOVE FOR YOU, HIS MEMORIES OF YOUR YEARS TOGETHER. I SPENT SEVEN DECADES FEELING HOW MUCH HE MISSED YOU, AND FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS I HAVE FELT HIS FEAR THAT YOU WOULD DIE BEFORE WE COULD SEE YOU. AND IT WAS NOT JUST HIM YOU FREED, BUT ME AS WELL. IS IT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND HOW I COULD WANT YOU?**

Steve began to earnestly wonder if it were possible to combust from self-consciousness, because his skin was burning up. Bucky had never been one for open declarations of love, instead choosing to show it in other ways. So being spoken to like this in a voice that literally sang through Steve’s whole body was an _experience_. Embarrassed sweat prickled up along his forehead and palms, the hairs at the back of his neck rose, and his cock shifted in his underwear, lengthening along his hip.

“Oh,” was all he could think to say. “Gosh.”

“C’mon, Stevie,” Bucky cajoled, fading neatly back into himself as if he’d been there the whole time. Maybe he had? His natural hand reached up to cup Steve’s chest, pushing Steve’s arms out of the way to thumb over a nipple and sending a jolt of sensation down through Steve. “I know how you are. After you got yourself all serumed up, you always got crazy for it if we went more than a day without taking care of you. And I’ve noticed how you’ve been every morning waking up with me, and heard you going at yourself in the bathroom. You gotta want it bad, right?”

Steve’s hot face somehow went hotter still. He couldn’t let go of the knowledge that it wasn’t just him and Bucky in the room, that there was a so-called ‘Great One’ sitting right below the surface of this interaction. His erection knew how it felt about that, at least, even if the rest of him wasn’t so sure, and it jumped once, twice, slithering under his jogging pants. Bucky looked down at the movement and grinned.

“I’ve missed this,” he crooned, three limbs curling under the waistband of Steve’s pants and underwear and pulling them back to reveal Steve’s cock, head already purpled and wet. Freed of the cloth, it swung up toward center, pointing at Bucky’s face like a compass toward North. “Just look at you.”

Steve kissed him to shut him up. Cautiously, this time, because he didn’t want a repeat of the morning’s unpleasantness. But Bucky didn’t seem to have any hesitation about kissing Steve, biting and licking at Steve’s lips till he opened up and let Bucky slide in behind his teeth.

Limbs surged up around Steve, pulling their bodies tight together so Steve’s bare cock flattened against Bucky’s shirt and Steve’s ass cradled the trapped shape of Bucky’s own erection. The embrace forced a broken breath out of Steve into Bucky’s mouth. Because Bucky was right, he needed this, but long ago he’d given up on ever having it again, and now it came with a body Steve could barely understand and a third party Steve had known little more than a week. Steve had never done this with anyone but Bucky, never had the chance with Peggy, but he supposed now he’d be adding a second someone to his list of lovers.

Bucky still knew how to kiss him, and the new parts of him felt wonderful on Steve’s skin. The cool metal of that arm dug its fingers into the muscles between Steve’s shoulder blades, and everything else was softer and smoother than Buck’s callused human hand. Somewhere a thread popped, the seams of Steve’s clothes strained to bursting by the limbs moving under them.

The image of the deep waters of the endless ocean swelled into Steve’s mind, the darkness below glittering with Yob Shoggoth’s many eyes. Steve felt like that now, limbs heavy like the deeps and full of too many glowing points of sensation to take in all at once. Muscular shapes shifted under and around him, curving between his thighs, and Bucky sank his teeth into Steve’s bottom lip and stayed there in the throbbing sting as he stood up with Steve in his arms, lifting him as if he still weighed nothing. Steve panted into the bite, their breath mixing damp between their faces. Bucky’s still smelled like kelp and brine.

When Bucky finally let go of his mouthful, Steve whimpered into the sudden rush of relief. But Bucky kissed the abused flesh, stroking the indentations with his tongue, smiling against Steve’s cheek.

“Where--” Steve asked as Bucky started walking with them both.

“Shower. I just feel safer there.”

Steve thought about protesting, because the image of the writhing mass he’d seen there still unsettled him. But he didn’t want to reject Bucky now, and even moreso didn’t want to be seen backing down from a challenge.

So Bucky was different--fine! So the fact that this would be on some level a threesome with something like a god made Steve uncomfortable--he could deal with discomfort, he’d had scoliosis and asthma for two decades. The weird sensation of his brain trying to bend enough to visually understand those limbs was objectively less unpleasant than coping with heart palpitations during sex before the War. So when Bucky kicked the bathroom door out of the way and pulled open the shower stall before setting Steve down to take off their clothes, Steve just shucked his underwear alongside Bucky.

The lustful looks Bucky trailed up and down Steve’s body as Bucky laid himself out in the tub made the discomfort of watching more and more limbs unfurl worthwhile. The look Bucky sent up at Steve as he beckoned him in was a mix of suggestive and challenging: _Are you going to back down now, Steve?_ his eyes seemed to ask. And Steve’s answer was, of course, _no, not anymore_. So Steve climbed into the tub with Bucky, straddling him again so his ass nestled over Bucky where he stood up hard and interested.

Then it occurred to Steve that Bucky would probably want to turn the water on now. Dreading the cold water hitting his back, when Bucky flicked the mixet with his foot, the warmth that followed caught Steve off-guard. He narrowed his eyes at Bucky.

“I know this building, it always starts off icy! Are you using _magic_ to warm the water?”

But Bucky just smiled, droplets pattering onto his metal arm and making his lashes clump and darken. “Why go through all the suffering of being experimented on by Nazis if I’m not even gonna use my new powers to treat my best guy right?”

Steve rolled his eyes, but in truth the answer made his chest hurt with mixed guilt and love. He didn’t want to think about Bucky’s decades with Hydra right now. So he grabbed a few nearby limbs and pulled them into his lap, indicating what they should do. Bucky’s expression shifted briefly from smug to surprised, but then those incredibly silky appendages wrapped around Steve’s cock and he couldn’t focus enough to care what they or Bucky looked like anymore. As water cascaded over them, they seemed to grow slicker, even, perhaps reacting to being in their natural element.

For a few moments Steve lost track of everything in the squeeze and stroke of them, their velvety strength unlike anything else he’d ever felt. A shiver ran up through him, as uncontrollable as his body’s response to Yob Shoggoth’s huge voice. But then Steve remembered himself and ground down against Bucky, who groaned. His metal hand reached around over Steve’s hip, smooth fingertips tracing down Steve’s tailbone to his entrance.

“I’ve missed you. You gonna let me?” Bucky asked, mouth deep red from the heat and kissing. His hair ran in dark rivers down his throat. Steve held his gaze and decided to up the ante.

“How sensitive are they?” he asked, grabbing another handful of the limbs from behind him and pushing them to where those metal digits just barely touched his opening. A ragged breath escaped Bucky at that, lashes flickering in shock.

“Very sensitive,” Bucky whispered, awed by the suggestion. “Much more than my own skin. They have senses I can’t even really describe. It’s like....like tasting color.”

Steve just lifted his eyebrows, because if _this_ was the Bucky he could have--the _love_ he could have, from _whoever_ it came from--then it seemed pointless to stick with half measures. If loving Bucky meant loving someone bigger and stranger too, then Steve had done much worse things for love.

“So would it feel better to fuck me with those?”

Bucky closed his eyes, his prick jumping up to tap against Steve’s balls. Steve grinned, proud of himself.

“Well come on then. Show me what you two can do.”

The tip of one pressed genteelly at him, tentative and shy, and that was when Steve realized: this was probably the first time Yob Shoggoth had ever had sex, at least as something approaching human. Probably ‘elder gods’ didn’t feel anxious about things like this, but even so. Somehow that idea softened whatever resistance had been left in Steve. His palms ached with his love, tingling up his arms to his collarbones and throat, and he braced one hand on Bucky’s metal shoulder while the other reached behind him to cradle the tendril touching him there, twining his fingers around it and prompting it forward. With a slow push it parted him, satin-slick as it nuzzled inside.

It felt nothing like a human finger or cock, and not even like a tongue. It occurred to Steve then that one of the things wrong with trying to look at the limbs was that they simultaneously looked like very large things seen from far away and small ones seen from up close, their distance and size as uncertain as their origin. It felt the same inside him, somehow both an easy fit and a burning stretch his body could barely contain.

In answer more limbs slid into existence, squirming around Bucky’s heaving chest and up Steve’s legs. They crept up the walls and the glass, filling the tub and catching the falling water to make inky pools whose surface didn’t reflect light. The rise of limbs upward around them turned the space into a steamy well and the moisture grew so thick in the air that Steve could barely breathe. But he braced his hands on Bucky’s chest and made himself look, made himself focus around his own fog of response.

Bucky’s metal fingers spasmed, the black entryway of his pupils eclipsing the color of his eyes, stare fixed on Steve’s face. Blush stained his skin in splotches down his neck and chest, normally a response he only had when close to climax. One corner of Steve’s mouth crooked up, both delighted and a little disappointed at the thought of Bucky finishing so fast. But it wasn’t as if he could judge; Steve himself had unraveled almost as soon as he’d gotten inside Bucky the first time, and a number of times after, too.

So Steve stroked the limb where it entered him, rubbing his fingers up either side of the shaft, encouraging it deeper and moaning loud when it complied. The sound echoed strangely off the surfaces of the room, as though the space were much, much larger. When the limb withdrew it dragged deliciously over his tender nerve endings, and when it wriggled back into place Steve’s whole attention narrowed down to that sensation.

Just when he was starting to relax into it, though, the room warped around them as though the axis of the world had tilted. The lights flickered and dimmed as Bucky let out a sharp whimper, shivered, and dug his thumbs into Steve’s hips, thighs flexing under Steve’s weight. When the electricity blinked back on and Steve looked down, the punch-drunk dazed satisfaction he saw on Bucky’s face was all too familiar.

“My ass is that good, huh?”

“I’m seeing colors human eyes don’t even have names for,” Bucky wheezed, still shuddering through aftershocks. “Just--gimme a minute.”

“ _Tasting_ colors, you mean?” Steve snickered, but he also leaned down and kissed Bucky again, wrapping his fingers through handfuls of the tendrils on either side of Bucky’s head. They squirmed and shifted at his touch as though eager.

When the thing inside Steve resumed its slithery not-quite-thrusting Steve just moaned his approval into the kiss. But when the interested touches of several others began to explore Steve’s rim, Steve pulled back enough to glare.

“Not gonna fit,” he complained.

“Never know unless we try,” Bucky grinned, all smarmy confidence. “Since when are you so cautious?”

Glare intensifying, Steve _knew_ he was being played. “Pretty sure getting fucked by even a single interdimensional anomaly already qualifies as dangerous,” he grumbled. But Bucky clearly knew he’d won, smile turning sunny and satisfied as another shape probed at Steve. Limbs covered more and more of him, swarming up his body in an eager tide as though Bucky--or perhaps Yob Shoggoth, at this point--couldn’t get enough of the taste and feel of Steve.

One limb inside Steve became two, became three, became a mind-bending searing stretch that felt like it might very well turn Steve inside out and reduce his nerve-endings to glowing cinders. He lost control of his grip strength first, digging his nails into the living mass around him and holding on as though his life depended upon it. It would have badly injured human flesh but Bucky just seemed to enjoy it, flushed and panting as the shapes curled around and between Steve’s fingers. Next went Steve’s control of his own voice, which broke as he howled. Last went the tightly-controlled order of Steve’s thoughts--and then all that was left was the feel and sound and sea-smell of his lovers as they joined at last.

It was a relief beyond anything to just let himself _feel_ it, to lose control and shake apart and hold onto the edge of climax by sheer will without having to think about anything but trying to make this last just a little longer. It was a _relief_ that it was too much and Steve didn’t have to hide it, a relief to not have to pretend that he knew what he was doing when Steve was never, ever sure anymore, not after the train and the snow and the fall.

The world bloomed, its basic three dimensions opening out into wider pleasure and sensation and closeness all around Steve’s body. Something gave way, forced past its mortal limits, and it cast him loose into the open deeps of home and the endless arms of his beloved.

Perhaps he stayed there only a few moments, or perhaps a few centuries. 

When some level of coherence returned, his chest heaving in deep breaths, the trembling oversensitivity of his skin left Steve feeling very small and very human. He blinked down at Bucky, who stared up at him slightly cross-eyed. He looked like he had before the War when he was drunk and hot-faced from dancing the night away at some bar and happy to be home with Steve.

“Fuck,” Steve said, with heartfelt vehemence, understanding what Sam had meant now. Bucky blinked, clearly trying to pull himself back together as he extricated himself from Steve. Any movement at all now made Steve shudder and jolt, sore and newly-aware of how _many_ limbs were in and around him now. When they were all out, Steve felt stretched-thin and empty. Several limbs squirmed through Steve’s semen as they withdrew from the front of him too, and Steve watched that in surprise.

“But you hate the taste?” he said, a question in his voice. Bucky rolled his eyes, but with his face still pinked up and tooth-marks still in his lip from where he’d bitten it, Steve took no offense.

“I hate the taste with my _human_ mouth, yeah. With these, I like it just fine. It’s a little like....the way an understated plaid looks? I dunno how else to describe it.”

Buried in what was now basically a room of limbs, another reminder of how Bucky had changed shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it somehow did. But this one just made Steve smile, curious and determined to ask him more about it later.

“I didn’t think you’d actually follow through, to be honest,” Bucky admitted in a timid, tremulous voice, but he went on even when Steve glowered down at him. “I figured you’d chicken out if I actually pushed for any of--” he waved a hand at everything, “--this.”

“I was scared when I kissed you the first time when we were sixteen, too,” Steve stated. “Loving a man like that--it was a big, frightening new thing, and I was scared of what it would mean. About me, and about the world we lived in, and the life we’d have to lead. But it didn’t stop me then either.”

At this Bucky stared up at Steve like _he_ was the marvel, unbelievable and strange.

Steve couldn’t help the words that followed.

“I missed you, sweetheart. So much. I love you.”

“I missed you too,” Bucky replied. “More than you know.”

Several moments of rearranging followed, awkward in exactly the same way it was with just human limbs involved, until Steve was laid out beside Bucky in the tub. Warm water still pattered down on them, but even if it hadn’t, the heat of Bucky’s body--all of it, everywhere--would have kept them warm.

“I was afraid--” Bucky began, but then stopped himself. Steve lifted a lazy hand and trailed one fingertip down Bucky’s nose, prompting him to go on with a nod of his head against Bucky’s cheek. Bucky sighed, a long gust of exhalation. “At first I was afraid that you’d never be found in the ice, and my body would age and die before you were rescued. Then you were found and I was afraid _you’d_ die without ever knowing I was still alive. Then I was afraid Hydra would win, and I’d be forced to kill you myself. They’d already sent us after Howard.”

Steve shuddered hearing any of it said out loud. It wasn’t as if the thoughts hadn’t occurred to him in the last week--they had, over and over again as he’d watched Bucky sleep. How close they’d both come to never having this again. How many ways there were for this to have gone wrong.

“But that didn’t happen,” Steve said aloud, as he’d said it to himself a hundred or more times before. “The worst already happened to us once. It didn’t happen again.” Determined to change the subject, Steve pushed himself up on one elbow and looked Bucky in the face. “Can I talk to Yob?”

He’d barely finished the question before the shift occurred, and Yob blinked those burning eyes at him calmly.

“Was that....” Steve began, self-conscious now he was actually faced with what they’d done. “Was it okay? For you?”

Yob laughed, not unkindly, and cupped a nearby limb around Steve’s cheek. The sound of their amusement made every bit of water around them dance like it had come alive.

**HUMAN ORGASM IS A VERY STRANGE EXPERIENCE. A LITTLE BIT LIKE EATING A STAR.**

“What--have you--?” Steve fumbled, brought up short. “You haven’t actually done that, have you?”

**I HAVE, THOUGH NOT OFTEN. ONLY A FEW TIMES SINCE I CAME INTO BEING.**

Pulling himself away from that idea, which he found too overwhelming right now on top of everything else, Steve forced himself back on topic.

“But this wasn’t your, er, your first-ever orgasm, was it?”

**NO, THAT WAS LAST WEEK. BUCKY AND I WANTED TO MAKE SURE WE WERE ABLE, SINCE IT HAD NEVER BEEN ALLOWED DURING OUR TIME WITH HYDRA. AND TO MAKE SURE I WOULDN’T REACT TO IT IN SOME WAY THAT WOULD HARM YOU.**

Steve made himself stay silent at this, swallowing down the absurd surge of jealousy that went through him. It was ridiculous and a selfish response and he knew it.

“Thank you,” he said instead, with all the sincerity he could muster. “Not for this--I mean this was great, wow. But I meant thank you for saving Bucky. I’m sure you understand what it means to me--to us.”

Yob Shoggoth looked at him for a while, eyes unblinking and strange.

 **I DID NOT MEAN TO SAVE HIM,** they said at last. **BUT I AM GLAD I DID.**

“You’re why he’s still alive. But also--” Steve swallowed, blinking rapidly to contain himself. “It means he wasn’t alone with them. If he’d just had the serum and Hydra found him again--”

Yob Shoggoth nodded, pulling Steve close to kiss him once upon the mouth. Steve kissed them back--once, twice, then a third time, slower, letting their sticky lips part honey-slow.

Steve fell asleep there in the shower, listening to Bucky’s heartbeat and the endless susurrus of moving water. He dreamed of sinking down, down, down, into the depths toward where something he loved lay resting. He couldn’t wait to arrive.

**

 

 

 

 

_Oh, poor Atlas_

_The world's a beast of a burden_

_You've been holding on a long time_

_And all this longing, and the ships are left to rust_

_That's what the water gave us_

  

_So lay me down_

_Let the only sound be the overflow_

_Pockets full of stones_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the name Yob Shoggoth from the actual Lovecraftian entity, [Yog Sothoth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yog-Sothoth). 
> 
> Also, as a final note here, please don't worry about Nick Fury! As in the original CA:TWS film, Fury survives his wounds and goes on to do other things. This is implied by the fact that the SHIELD data-dump happens offscreen, and that would have required Fury's participation. By the end of this fic's timeline, the only one who still doesn't know this is Steve. I wrote part of a scene in which Steve gets to see him again, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it tidily into this fic. I may finish it at some point and post it and some other snippets in a separate file here on AO3. 
> 
> If you're interested in more stories in this 'verse, let me know that and your thoughts about them! I'm still inspired to write in this AU.


End file.
